Ben has been calling Gabriella our "merry mischief maker", and the name fits our sweet 11 month old very well. She is a happy, chatty, social, busy girl!
Gabriella loves visitors, greeting them with a big "Hi!" (or two... or three) a wave and a cheesy grin. She sends Daddy off in the morning waving (and saying) bye-bye and, more recently, she is starting to blow kisses. Some of her words are coming out very clearly, and Gabriella is adding steadily to her vocabulary of identifiable sounds. DaDa has become Daddy, ma ma is very clear, she says something like siiii-Ah!, looking around for her brother, and she says (and points)down--after she is practically leaping out of our arms.Sometimes, out of the blue, G echos the sounds of the words or phrases we say, if not quite pronouncing the words themselves: for example, "thank you" sounds like tiAing ooo.
Our delightfully merry mischief maker has also begun to understand the concept of no-nos in the house. No-nos like the stereo: She will crawl over in front of the receiver, shake her head back and forth, say no-no, and then turn the dial anyway. This used to cause quite a start (esp. for Gabriella) if the stereo was turned on, or prepare a BIG surprise for whoever (Daddy) turned the stereo on next (very late one night). We have learned to check the volume BEFORE poking the power switch.
Similar behavior also abounds for the drawers in the kitchen, the boys' toys, food (esp. cheerios) that she finds miraculously abandoned on the floor, etc. :)
In the past month Gabriella has developed into a very happy, deliberate, semi-independent little eater and she loves to feed herself. She has developed her own unique baby sign for more food, but something different -- patting the sides of her head with her hands. Of course, her hands are most often covered in food, so we also end up washing her hair with wet washcloth after meals :p
Another favorite sign now is brush my teeth which she communicates by rubbing her pointer finger across her front teeth slowly, then with increasing enthusiasm and urgency. She will crawl to the bathroom door and sign brush, sometimes even signing it if she happens to hear water running anywhere else in the house!
Other fun activities include turning on and off light switches (sometimes mid-diaper change), shining a flashlight on the ceiling during diaper changes, playing peek-a-boo, and reading her touch-and-feel books.
Heart warmer: This afternoon Lisa and Ben walked down to the main floor after spending quite awhile in Ben and Josiah's room cleaning. Trying to clean anyway, as Gabriella moved about underfoot tearing into everything she could find. As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Ben turned to Lisa and said, "When I found out we were having a baby, I never imagined it would be this much FUN!"
