Our little climber

Ena is keeping us busy these days. She has become a lot more mobile, first with walking and now, nearly running. We’ve been chasing her around the house, trying to keep her out of harm’s way. This is made all the more difficult by the fact that we haven’t really baby-proofed our house. While some of our rooms have been made safe for her to play in most still contain bookshelves full of books and breakables, unguarded stairs, and other hazards. Now that she is zooming about we’ve found ourselves constantly having to run interference and every second word out of our mouths seems to be “no.”

As hard as her new mobility has been on us it has also been lovely to see her gain better control of her body and begin to explore her world more. She loves to climb and has been going up and down the stairs with great gusto. In fact, she seems to have found something to climb in each room of our house. In the kitchen, it’s the small stepladder; in her playroom, her table; in our bedroom, our bed (though she can’t yet get up onto it, she loves sliding off of it). I think she’s going to be a great tree climber when she gets older.

Her vocabulary has been improving, too. While she still only uses three words regularly (up, mama, and dada) she has been able to say a number of other words this past week, including: apple, banana, highchair, Ena, hi and bye. Of course, she understands much more than she can say. She seems to have taken a real interest in words lately and has had us reading (and re-reading) first word books to her.
Of course, her favourite book at the moment is Ten Minutes till Bedtime. She never seems to tire of it. We’ve both been reading it again and again. She likes to sit in our lap and flip the pages (we’re not always done reading the page before she turns!). Her favourite page used to be the one where the father calls “bedtime” and the boy (and all the hamsters) are caught out in the bathtub. Now I think her favourite is the one just after where they all “quick, quick, dry off,” use the toilet (which E makes great sound effects for), put your pj’s on, drink a glass of water (glug, glug, glug) and run to bed. Which is where I am going right now. Good night.