Transformations

It's funny how Magda seemingly doesn't change for a while and then she appears to make a sudden leap in development. This last week has been one of those.

She'd been getting ready to walk for a while and took her first steps a few weeks ago. Slowly she started practicing her new skill but stuck to crawling as her prefered mode of travel. This week her walking has accelerated and now she prefers to walk when she tries to get some place. She still falls back on crawling if there are steps or a slope involved or if she's getting tired, but she's now on her feet most of the time. Today we had the McHargs over for the Dancing with the Stars finale, and she ended up turning around in a circle standing on her feet (she likes doing it sitting down, too). I think she's going to be a dancer like her mom.

Her speaking has blossomed, too. She now answers "yes" or "no" in addition to nodding or shaking her head. She's getting good a signing "please" and "thank you" - I usually have to ask her to be polite, but sometimes she does so unsolicited. And at times she vocally tries to get your attention so that she can sign "thanks". I've also noticed her forming a sentence today. She used her "eat" sign (and said "T") and followed it with her sign for "apple". Pretty cool!

She's also quite fascinated with letters. She's got a bunch of alphabet-based books and blocks and magnets and what-not. She knows some of them, like "O", but I think it's mostly just interesting shapes to her. Today we were walking by a store with huge capital letters on the bottom of their store-front and she just couldn't get fast enough to them to point them out.

She likes being read to, and can occasionally spend several minutes looking at one of her books on her own while spouting gibberish. The book may be upside-down or she may be looking at random pages, but she doesn't care.