I’ve noticed Kate’s been making a lot of mental connections lately. She knows several words – doesn’t say anything, but knows what they mean. “Kitty,” “Book,” “Daddy,” “Yay!” (she claps), and most recently, “Eat.” She also knows her name. I’ve started doing some signs again here and there, so when it’s time for a meal or when I think she is hungry I squat down in front of her and say, “Kate, do you want to eat?” and make the sign for eat. She now gets a big grin on her face and today she leaned forward and put her arms up so I could pick her up to put her in her highchair. I don’t yet have a sign for sleep and I need to start something. Right now when she’s tired she lays her head on my chest, and when she wants to nurse she tugs my shirt up. I was doing the sign for “milk” with her months ago, but when she started experimenting with her fingers everyone thought she was waving and I didn’t feel like confusing her or walking around correcting everyone she meets so I just left it for now.

In addition to putting blocks back into buckets she’s now dropping things in everything. Today in our recycling bin I found a paci, easter egg, and two magnets. Her pacis have been going “mysteriously” missing and I’m finding them in garbage bins, laundry bins, buckets, boxes… we’re going to have to start screening the garbage.

She’s started pushing her little train around, which is ridiculously adorable.

In the bath she realized she can lift her ball toy and water sprinkles out the holes. She’s not quite sure how it works yet, sometimes she tries lifting it before submerging it, but she’s trying to figure it out.

We have magnets on our fridge and she loves pulling them all off. Today as I was making my dinner I look over and she’s sitting there pressing the magnets onto the fridge. Suddenly it just clicked that she can put them up there. Of course half the time they fell right off because they were backwards, which puzzled her. I needed to feed her dinner but I didn’t want to interrupt her!

Did I mention the xbox incident? She likes to play with the controller and a couple of weeks ago she inadvertently purchased some game add-on download. We try keeping it away from her, we gave her the second controller with batteries removed, and that worked for a little while. But now she knows that our controller does things to the TV screen. I loaded up Lego Star Wars and let her push buttons the other day. She’s now actually holding the controller properly, using her thumbs to push buttons and move the stick. She was actually moving the character around the screen and jumping. That’s kind of crazy. She had a great time with it…. until she started pushing the xbox button and somehow managed to escape the game and nearly purchase a 19.99 game while I was checking my email. Gah. And the child lock doesn’t lock out purchases, which is assinine. Apparently we have to create an account for her that has no access to billing information!