Cheese...

Nothing spectacular happened today, so I thought I'd share a fun little habit/quirky thing Monkey has been picking up lately. She started doing it maybe a week or so ago. She would do it at dinner, when I sit across the table from her. She'd smile really big, tilt her head up, eyes all squiched up and just smile at me. I'd do it back and laugh, and she'd start laughing and doing it more. It's so hilarious. It's like her sense of humor is budding and she realizes she can be funny. For a few days she'd do this every day at dinner time. Now she's starting to do it other times of the day as well. When we went out to eat with the fam last week she did it at the restaurant and everyone was just eating it up. She's so hilarious. I love seeing more of her personality pop out as she's getting older. She insists now on walking down the stairs, holding a hand. She's not that bad at it. She's consistently asking for "help" using her signs and I'm thinking about adding more words to her vocab. She picks them up so well, and isn't really using real words yet. I'm sure when she does choose to start talking though, it'll come in spades.

When the hubs left tonight for something, Monkey got really sad. So I picked her up and cuddled her on the rocking chair. She was all jammied up, holding her teddy bear (or more like, holding the rabbit ears on her teddy bear.) while I was sweating mildly (having just gotten home from a 2 1/2 mile run) in my bath robe. But I didn't mind sitting there, because she cuddled me for a good five minutes without moving. It was really sweet. After a while, Moose asked what I was doing, and declared he wanted cuddles too. Seeing as there was no room on my lap, he came to the side of the rocking chair and stroked Monkey's face, saying sweet things very softly, and calling her "sweety pie". (His new name for her 99% of the time.) It was really precious.

Today was an average day. There were frustrating moments, and the ordinary struggles (like the 45 minutes after I put the kids down potty trip, then subsequent hiding under the table because someone happened to call and I was on the phone and then getting snippy about going back to bed - that just happened), but it's these sort of things that I remember most, and make an effort to remember.