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| 16 months old (May 14, 2015), Looking out on the world, Cutie!, with Mom, Snack time outside, "Mengie" love |
Lennon has become quite the little chatterbox! She pretty much talks constantly from the time she gets up (she chats to herself in her crib) to the time she goes to bed. It seems like she learns at least a handful of new words everyday, and remembers them. She attempts to repeat every word we say. Time to watch what we say I guess ;) She now calls me "mommy" which is just so adorable. I'd love to be able to list all the words she's saying but I just don't think I could, she has that many! One helpful word she has is "boop." (Still working on the "p" sound at the beginning of words) When she has a dirty diaper (or she just farts) she points to her bum and says "boop." If she could tell us before she actually "boops" we could maybe start potty training?! She loves to talk to people in the grocery store, mostly telling them about her shoes and giving a string of "ba-byes." A very social baby!
Penguins... Lennon's absolute favourite thing. Her word for penguin is "mengie," and I hear it about a thousand times a day! She has a book with pictures of all different animals and for some reason zeroed in on the penguin. Besides "bear" it was the first animal name she tried to say. She is now obsessed with penguins. It's usually the first or second word she says in the morning. We recently got her a stuffed penguin and she is in love. She hugs it (says "aww" when she gives hugs) and passes it to us to hug it as well. She says good night to it every night before bed - it has a rattle in it so we can't let her take it to bed because we'd hear the rattling all night! - and looks for it first thing in the morning when we come downstairs. Adorable! There is a great penguin exhibit at the zoo with a ton of penguins. We were there the other day and Lennon was in awe (see video). She stared for the longest time and then started saying "mengie mengie" and then started squealing along with them. We actually went in to the exhibit twice because she loved it so much!
May saw a visit from Uncle Steve. It was a short one since he always (this is the second time) has something going on in Calgary when we are going away. It was nice though. Lennon was excited to see "deese" (Steve) and asked where "lana" (Alana) was. Steve brought a whole bunch of hand me downs from Alana! One shirt has a puppy on it and I showed it to Lennon and said this shirt is from Alana. The next day I pulled it out and asked if she wanted to wear it and she said "lana lana." She remembered me saying the shirt was from Alana - talk about a good memory! Anyway, Lennon had fun visiting with Uncle Steve.
After our short, but sweet, visit with Steve we were off to Penticton for our annual May long weekend trip with friends. This year Lennon stayed with Grandma L and Pugga, who were also in Penticton, so Fred and I could enjoy our annual wine touring weekend. The last two years were a little subdued with me being pregnant and then with breastfeeding a 4 month old. So this year was back to our full on tour! We had a great time and lots of laughs with some great friends. Lennon had fun staying with Grandma and Pugga, and Ashton was there too so she loved that!
Lennon is much more interested in practicing walking now. Although she has not yet tried to walk solo, she often comes up to us and says "alk alk" and reaches for our hands to talk her for a walk. She's getting pretty quick. She'll take a step or two holding on with just one hand but then drops to her knees again. Once she feels confident to let go, she'll be off!
In other news, we've made two pretty big decisions. The first is that I'm going to be a stay-at-home mom! We've decided that I will not be going back to work in the fall but will stay home with Lennon. I have had to resign from the school board, which was a bit weird feeling, but I am very happy about the decision and feel very lucky that we are in a position that allows me to stay home. I know that it's a dream for a lot of people. I'll stay home at least until Lennon is in school and then we'll re-evaluate. The other decision is that Fred is going to go back to school. He is going to get his MBA! He was accepted into a program that is run jointly by Queens and Cornell (a big deal!). The program is pretty intensive and starts of with two weeks of immersion followed by every other weekend of classes. The classes are held here through tele-conferencing. So, he will still work while completing the program. The whole thing is done in 17 months - crazy! It'll be busy and intense but he's really excited about it and I know he'll do great. I'm very proud of him!
