Babies, Horses & Phones, 16 Months
Time sure has flown – one year and four months since Hope was born, and she just gets more beautiful every day.
She has an entire little vocabulary of words now. Her original ‘doggie’ has expanded to include ‘baby’, mommy, dada, phone, hello, eee (horsie) many other words we can’t yet make out, and some specific exclamations when she hears a phone ring or the dogs outside barking.
She is the first to let us know when the phone rings – with an excited ‘phone!’ and pointing for us to answer it. Anytime the dogs outside start barking at something, she’ll run up to us and say something excited about it while repeatedly pointing from herself out the window.
Hope is fascinated with phones. She loves to steal one of our phones and push the buttons, or to listen while someone on the other end talks to her. Some of her favorite toys are old dead cell phones and toy phones to play with. She knows exactly how to pick up a phone, push the buttons, hold it up to her ear, and say ‘Hello!”, just like mom and dad do all the time!
“Baby” is another of her recent words that she uses a lot this month. I don’t know where she picked it up from, as I never taught her this specifically, but she will walk up to me, pull up my shirt, and put her hand flat on my baby-belly and repeat ’baby’ every time. Of course there are the moments of confusion where the calls her own tummy a ‘baby’ as well, or even Richard’s belly a ‘baby’, but she seems to have a fascination with petting and rubbing mom’s baby belly while repeating ‘baby’. It really is cute. She does recognize real babies as well – excitedly pointing out pictures on walls or magazines of babies, or referring to real babies as well with a point and exclamation of ‘baby’! It will be interesting to see what she thinks of her new baby brother or sister when it is born.
A few months back she was not sure what to think of the horses – they were interesting to observe, but up close a little intimidating. That all changed when aunt Sarah gave Hope her first horse ride on Cochise (with cousin Rachel to help hold her on). Hope was nothing but excited ear-to-ear smiles for the whole thing, and we have heard exclamations of “eee” (Hope’s version of horsie) ever since!
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