Dog and Pony Show

Now that Amanda has reached the ripe old age of ten months old (she'll actually be 11 months old next Friday) she's starting to be able to do more. She crawls pretty well and she can pull up to a standing position. The other day she even walked about five feet while holding onto a chair. She's figuring out how to turn on toys that before she only looked at in amazement, and she can drink through a straw, which my other two couldn't do until the were well over a year old. Best of all, she does tricks.

It's not like she does magic tricks, she can't pull a rabbit out of her onesie or anything, but she can do little things when you give her a cue. For example, if you say "Yay!", she'll clap her hands. If you tell her to say goodnight or goodbye to someone, she automatically starts opening and closing her fingers in a tiny wave. Sometimes she'll hear someone else saying goodbye, not even talking to her, and her fingers automatically start moving. If you look at her and say with a little sing song "no, no, no" and shake your head, she'll shake her head as well. All things very cute, and not yet annoying.

My favorite is when she nods her head. Today I went to lunch with a couple of friends. I kept asking Amanda questions like "do you want more?" and she would nod her head yes. It was amazing and seemed like she completely knew what I was saying and was answering me. Although I'd like to think my daughter is a genius, I decided to test it out. So, I asked, "do you want to jump off a bridge?" and she nodded yes. "Do you want to eat spinach?". Yes. Okay, I know she's willing to try anything, but I know she does not want to eat spinach. Who really does?

So it's cute, but she doesn't know quite what she's doing. That's okay, I'll enjoy it for what it is, because sooner or later she will start talking and communicating the right way, and I'll long for these days when she just nodded because she was happy I was talking to her.