August Updates

On Sunday we took Penny to Dorothy B. Oven park here in Tallahassee. I don’t know why I’ve never been there, but it is a beautiful little park with lots of little ponds, and fountains, and landscaped stream beds. We packed a little picnic and let Penny run around. It was such a pretty place and the weather was gorgeous.

In development news, Penny can say “fish” now, only it comes out more like “sish.” I think she might also have said "cup" yesterday, but I will have to see if she does it again. She also started copying Tray saying "shh" when he's trying to put her to sleep.

Also, recently she’s been practicing dropping things. She’ll take a ball and hold it up and out away from her and then very purposefully let it go. It’s fascinating to watch because you can see that sometimes she has to concentrate to make it happen, but she's getting better and better at it. Also, for a couple weeks now she’s been bringing things to Tray and I and taking our hand in hers and placing whatever it is into our hands. If your hand is all balled up, she will take it and open it with her hands and then put whatever it is she has into your hand. It’s very cute.
Another cute thing I've noticed her doing is "brushing" her hair. She'll take her brush and put it up to her head although she can't really brush with it yet.
She's also getting really good at pointing out her body parts. If you ask her where her feet are she'll bend over and touch her toes. She knows where her knees are and her tummy. She's still not clear on facial features though. If I ask her about her nose, she'd rather show me Mr. Bear's nose instead.
She really understands a lot of what we say to the extent that it kind of scares us sometimes. It can be a little unnerving from time to time. Like I can say something casually to Tray about needing to get something out of Penny's diaper bag and she goes over and gets it out and brings it to me. She gives us the heebies doing something or another like that at least once a week. It's a good thing - but just strange sometimes. Hard to describe.

Yesterday, I took her to visit my friend Laura Lee and her son Arran. Arran is 1 week younger than Penny. He isn't walking yet, but he can really crawl super fast. They seemed to have a good time and were very cute together. She did really well sharing the bear she was playing with, but I think that's because she loves to bring us stuff at home so she was just doing the equivalent for Arran. Once he took her sippy cup and was playing with it. I could tell it confused her and she seemed to want it back, but she didn't make any big deal out of it. In fact, at some point she did get it back but immediately gave it back to him. So I guess the whole sharing thing is probably a later development, but it seems like she's on track to be good with that.