Language leaps and bounds

It seems that all of a sudden, Jenna's vocabulary is growing exponentially. She does a whole lot of jabbering, and a lot of what she says is undecipherable, but she is definitely trying to repeat many more words. She still either resists saying 'Mama', or it just comes out with a 'da' or a 'ga' sound. She understands a lot of what we say to her, and if we ask her where something is (such as our belly buttons, her bee mobile, specific toys, the dogs, or her tongue) she responds correctly every time.

She loves reading her books. We read the same three favorite books about a dozen times each every day! One of her books has flaps with pictures. For the longest time, she's been so focused on opening every single flap and then turning the pages as quickly as possible. Then she started taking the time to point out the ladybugs. Now, she can find the sun, the dog, the stars, and a few other things.

She also recognizes and verbalizes her words for airplane, bird (she giggles like crazy at birds!), and tree. She's even doing a lot more pointing and saying 'da!' at different things. Before having this empty slate to teach, I never really thought about how much there is to learn. Everything we look at has a name, a color, a texture, sometimes a sound.... Now it seems like there isn't enough time in the day to satisfy Jenna's curiosity about everything around her.

To wrap it up in a neat little package: Jenna is an incredible kid. My love for her grows every single day. I thought she was fantastic when she was a tiny little baby, but this just keeps getting better. She's fun to be around and I'm proud to be related to her. It's a bummer that she goes to bed so early at night, but I look forward to waking up every day to see her.