Libby learned the word "no" about a month ago. Surprisingly, it has not been the terrible, terrible thing parents have told me it would be. (So far!) It's actually just really cute. Probably because she always says it in a sing-song voice.

Just now, Libby was sitting in her backpack carrier in the living room. (Yep, just sitting in it. She loves this thing.) She started fussing and I thought she wanted to get out. I asked her "do you want down?" Her response: "Down? Noooo (sing-song)." It might not quite be a sentence, but she's combining words and it's adorable.

Going for a walk in the backpack carrier

She does say no sometimes when we try to put her pajamas on at night, but it's really no worse than the flailing of arms and legs we usually get as a response. Instead, I feel almost proud that she is grown up enough to express herself. It's almost like she's a real person now. :)

Humor

 

 My daughter is really funny sometimes, like when she closes her eyes and bats her arms around to feel for things as if she's blind. (I promise we haven't been teaching her to make fun of blindness - don't know where she got this from!) It thrills me that she has a sense of humor, and I can't wait to see the things she comes up with when she can string together more than 2 words.

Partly, she's funny because she likes to imitate us. We read lots of books that have pictures of food in them. Awhile back, I started pretending to pick up the food and feed it to the characters on the page. Libby picked this up right away and does it every time now. She will also feed it to me, to herself, and to her baby dolls. This little habit turned out to be key in avoiding a meltdown last week.

We went to Ikea to buy a TV stand and while we were outside waiting for Jared to pull the car around, Libby saw 2 ladies with ice cream cones. At first, Libby lunged toward them and started grunting to make her desire known. But a light bulb seemed to come on in her head and she switched gears. She reached out her hand and pretended to grab the ice cream between her 2 fingers and feed herself. Not only was it hilarious to see, but I was also incredibly impressed with her ability to soothe herself. 

Zoo Trip

Libby's playgroup took a field trip to the Peoria Zoo. (Have I mentioned Libby's playgroup? It's for babies 0-3 years and it's part of the public school system. We meet at the preschool once or twice a week and Libby gets to play with all the sweet toys I won't buy her because they take up too much room at home.)

Anyway, this was by far the smallest zoo I've ever been to, but it still had plenty to entertain Libby for a couple of hours. As a bonus, there was a park nearby with one of those huge wooden playgrounds, complete with a sandpit.  Libby was giddy with excitement. One of my many beefs with our small town (and our rural area in general) is that there aren't any cool parks or playgrounds around. We had to drive an hour and twenty minutes to get to this zoo and playground. Sigh.....

But back to the zoo. The weather was gorgeous that day. Serious blessing because it was raining and in the 40s the rest of the week and then, bam - 80 degrees and sunny on the day of our field trip. Beautiful!

Libby had a special moment with the meerkats...