There's Boy George!

Annabelle is such a happy baby.

Sometimes.

She loves to talk (I think that goes with the gender!) and will carry on conversations with herself, as well as anybody else in the room. She babbles and babbles endlessly about things that only *she* understands. She will pick up an object, hold it up in my general direction and ask, "da bi no pi no do?" Of course, I have absolutely no clue what she is saying but the important thing is....she does. She knows exactly what she is saying and that's all that matters because she really had no intention of giving me whatever object it is that she was holding up towards me anyway. I just think it's really cute.

And she has a sense of humor. She will babble something like, "ri ca mi in ap ba no ti." And then laugh. I'm convinced she just told herself a joke. She understands what she just said, even if nobody else did. And what she said was funny.

Sometimes Hubby & Gabby will swear up and down that Annabelle actually said something "real", something intelligible. Something like, "could you please pass the potatoes?" OK, I just made that last one up, but what Hubby "heard" Annabelle say the other day was not too far from that.

"There's Boy George!"

Yes, this is what Hubby is *so sure* Annabelle said. "There's Boy George!" Hmmm, I wonder where or how she could have picked that sentence up. Normally, children will repeat what they hear but I can't for the life of me, imagine where or how Annabelle could have heard this sentence (in order to repeat it.) No Hubby, I'm sorry....that is probably NOT what Annabelle said, as much as you'd like to think it was. I don't think he believes me and I think, deep down, he is convinced she really did say it. Next thing you know, Hubby will swear he hears Annabelle singing, "Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?"

Annabelle is starting to walk for longer periods of time, on steadier feet. She has realized that if she proceeds slowly, instead of trying to speed walk across the living room like she normally does, that she can stay upright longer. It is so neat to see her steady herself, then take slow and deliberate steps towards her goal (usually my cell phone or the remote control.) She is trying soooooooo hard and I just know that she will be sprinting around the house in no time, terrorizing the animals and wreaking all kinds of havoc...but that's just one more adventure that I am truly looking forward to.


Annabelle is getting so good at walking now:







And she loves to play with Mommy's cell phone:





Annabelle is getting pretty good at understanding some of my simple commands like "close it" (she is allowed to play with my cell phone as long as she keeps it closed...I don't want any accidental '911' calls!) and, of course, "no" (when she sticks her fingers in the fireplace.) The other day, however, she seemed to understand me better than I thought she did. I gave her an ice cube to suck on. It was inside a little mesh bag so that there was no way she could choke on it, yet I still wanted her to sit down with it anyway, instead of crawling all around, dragging this ice cube all over the carpet and then sticking it back in her mouth. I sat her down on the floor several times and she kept getting up each time. I would tell her, "sit down please" over and over again and she kept getting up. Finally, I just let her crawl around since that's what she obviously wanted to do and I was tired of fighting her on this one. Then I looked over and saw what it was she was trying to do. It appears that Annabelle *was* indeed willing to sit down, just not on the floor. Now, how creative is that?!?