Birthday Girl

Leah turns 1 year old today! Happy Birthday to Leah! She has changed and grown so much already in the few short months she has been with us, and we are so happy to celebrate her special day with her.

Some funny and smart things she's been doing lately.....

She stops and claps her hands and smiles to herself after every sip from a regular cup, when she kicks a ball, when she climbs up on the bed and climbs off the bed, when she climbs up the glider chair and ottoman (even while they are rocking) and when she climbs down, when she climbs off the arm of the couch, etc.

I saw her take off the baby-proofing latch from the kitchen cupboard (it was already loose) to play with in the family room, and then she brought it back a little later and hung it up on the kitchen knob all by herself and walked away.



She loves her books. This has happened 3 different times so far; at naptime or bedtime, when I've started reciting the opening lines of the book, (yes, I've had to memorize it since she always steals the book from me in mid-sentence), The Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown,..."By the big red barn in the great green field, there was a pink pig who was learning to squeal...", she went and picked out the right book from a pile of books and brought it over to me and sat in my lap!




She still talks about dogs and cats all day long...still her first and last words of the day. She picks out pictures of dogs everywhere when we're out shopping or from her books and on her toys. I've given her a few old dog calendars and she loves sitting on the floor and flipping through the pages while she babbles to herself. When we were watching tv one day, she was sitting by herself and looking through her books and we saw her pointing and saying "dog" over and over. Then she came over to get us and bring us back to the book to show us the page with the dog on it. It was really cute.



She climbs in or on top of every box she can get her hands on. Here she is combining it with her mirror play.




When I am loading the dishwasher, she is always very eager to run over and stick her hand in it, so I have to keep it closed and keep her away from it. But the other day while I was emptying it, I just left it open for her to explore and she climbed right on. So here's the baby-in-the-dishwasher shot.