Mercury Rising

March was indeed in like a lion, out like a lamb. At the beginning of the month, we were still hopping snowbanks and bundling up to go outside. Yesterday Lizzie wore shorts for the first time as the temperature reached nearly 80F. Today will be even warmer, they say.

With the warmer weather come a number of firsts for Miss Lizzie. She took her first big digger a little more than a week ago, face planting on the driveway. Poor thing was startled and understandably upset for a few minutes, but I suspect I was far more traumatized when I came home to a scarred forehead and bloody nose. She's healed nicely already and shows no sign of slowing down or watching her feet any more carefully...

The other major developments are gross and fine motor and verbal: she climbs stairs with ease, uses a fork quite competently (and a spoon to a lesser extent), and talks the day away. She has more new words than I'll remember now, but they include: nose, ear, eye, yogurt ("yah-goo"), toes ("goes"), bug ("buh"), yes ("ssss"), bye bye, hello (which is enunciated very clearly and loudly, but only into a phone or phone-like device (calculator, metronome, etc.)), bubbles ("buh buh"), squirrel ("querr-rah"), dog ("gogh"), bottle ("bubuh"), night night ("neh neh"), hands ("hahhh"). She signs with almost all of these words, which has helped us enormously with the translation. She also signs or understands a great deal that she doesn't yet say verbally. For instance, she can identify fingers, forehead, chin, mouth, hair, and bellybutton, but I'm not yet convinced she's saying the words. (She has certain filler words that tend to mean anything -- like "mah", and "dee doo", which merit partial credit at the very most...) If we ask her if she's tired and ready for a nap, she'll sign "sleep" and start walking upstairs or say "neh" (no) and continue doing whatever it is she's up to. Same thing with eating -- mention breakfast and she'll either say no or sign eat and head to the highchair. When it's time to go downstairs for the morning, we ask her to put her Coco bear and paci in the crib and she'll run over and do it. I'm so proud. There are quite a few foods we can't mention in her presence unless we have them handy (oranges, blueberries, grapes, etc.), and we certianly can't say "baby signing time". If we slip up, she starts singing "ma ma ma" and signing the beginning of the theme song. (Apparently she likes it.)

In any event, good times.