Summatime

It's finally summer here in Portland, which means we are having nice sunny weather (except for last week when we had thick muggy nastiness and rain...) Isabelle is such an outside ("sigh! sigh!") baby -- the summer suits her. She loves to splash outside in her little pool, eat popsicles (something she does amazingly well), and run around nekkid. It's good to be a baby in the summer, just look:













Words, words, words. We seem to hear more new ones every day. That and her annunciation is getting better, I actually thought I heard the "L" sound in a word the other day. Some words, however, remain a mystery to anyone other than her parents. For instance "pop" is help. "Mo" might be Molly, move, or more. You just have to know the context. I think she also said her first sentence yesterday when she said "more Mama." I am sure word-strings are just around the corner.

Isabelle's latest baby-joke is to put her pants on her head:



And can I tell you, she gets extremely grumpy when the pants wont go onto her head. She gets mad and cries, or says "pop pop" and holds them at you. Usually, its the former as very often when she is trying to do something, and you offer help, she yanks whatever it is away and tells you "no." Hmmmm, I don't know where she might have gotten that personality trait from???

Meat, meat, meat!

When I asked Isabelle if she was ready to eat dinner last night she responded with a loud chant of "meat, meat, meat!" I hadn't even told her what we were having. Lucky for me (and my limbs apparently) that the meal indeed involved hamburger.

The child loves meat. Of course we all know this is no surprise given her meat and potatoes mother. But it's the vehemence of her meat-loving that cracks me up.

Exhibit 1: last weekend we went to Buster's Texas BBQ (yee haw!) for dinner. We ordered her the brisket with mashed potatoes and bread. I had barely set the plate on the table and was turning to grab her to hoist her into the high-chair, when her little chubby hand reached up and snatched a big hunk o'meat off the plate and shovelled it into her mouth.

She proceeded to eat her brisket, Paul's potatoes, a fair number of my french fries and some bread. She also said "Hi" to everyone who passed the table, causing smiles from her new admirers.

Exhibit 2, the T-bone steak dinner (no description necessary):






Exhibit 3 - seen here in live action.

In other news Isabelle is saying more and more words. Almost anything that you label for her she will repeat. This morning, for instance, she was up on the bed with me and starting climbing down. I asked her by signing if she needed help (I said it out loud too). Until now she would have signed "help," but today she said "help."

She also can say "cow" perfectly when you show her a picture of a cow. What else does she say....

Mini (Mimee)
Meeko (Meek)
Mama
Dada
Zach
Molly (Mo)
Money (Mon)
Car
Chalk
Wet
Yes (Yeah)
No
Crackers (crcks)
Spaghetti (sgki)
Spoon (spu)
Fork (fk)
Meat
Chicken (bock bock)
Shit (it completely cracks me up to hear her say it -- is that wrong???)
Beer (B!)
Ball
Balloon (boo)
Cat
Paper (pape)
Pants (pa)
Shark (shock)
Mole
Wall
Cece
Shoe
Sock
Car (ca)
Book
Hot
Outside (sigh)
Purple (purp)
Blue (boo)
Sink
Spin
Pee pee
Cheese (chs)
Please (peas)
Thank you (ta-tu)
Pool (poo)
Bowl
Cow
Towel
Pink
Brown
Green (geen)
Shower (shouw)
Sneeze
Remote (mote)

I know there are others. I need to keep a running list at home and then post them. Because truly in the last few weeks her word recognition and repetition seems to be growing like crazy.