Talking, stacking, identifying colors, eating chili

Hello, world! Meggers hit a handful of developmental milestones this week, so I wanted to share. :-)

Thursday, 7:20 pm: First word! Jonathan came home, and she yelled, "Da da da da da!" Now, she's said that before, but (as far as we can tell) that's the first time she connected a word and what it meant. Fun!

Also this week, she learned to stack. She put boxes on top of each other in the kitchen, and upstairs she stacked all the plastic doughnuts on their pole and even identified the right colors. I walked her through it - "Now the PURPLE one" - and she'd grab the purple one and put it on - "Now the ORANGE one" - and so on. She could tell which color I meant, reinforced sometimes by pointing (but sometimes she could tell just verbally). The whole collection made it on there in order.

I boggled the other day at how much she really does understand. I said, "Can you go get But Not the Hippopotamus?" and she chose that very book off her shelf from among them all. Whoa.

She's also worked out how to tell us what she wants to eat. I'm trying to teach her the signs for "more" and "please," but when she's hungry... she points. If we don't get it, she starts jumping and yelling. She also lets us know if we feed her the wrong thing, such as Cheerios when she really wants raisins. Craisins are all right too, but raisins are her true love at the moment.

But tonight, she proved she was her mother's daughter. We made our own little Chili Works burritos for dinner tonight, complete with three-chili red sauce and the works. They were really, really good. My New Mexican heart was happy. So meanwhile we were feeding Meg a little rice cereal and raisins, like good parents, and she starts pointing at my burrito and getting worked up over it. Um... okay, Meg, but watch out. That chili's hot. I tear off a bite. And she gobbles down that bite and several others. What a girl!