1. She loves to "share" though she is the ultimate Indian-giver. When she's eating (she eats mostly finger food now) she likes to share her food by sticking her arm out to feed us whatever it is. Because of drool and general sloppiness, the food can get really gross. Dan and I either fake eating it or suck it up and really eat it, while fake grinning and thanking her for sharing. Today, we went to her friend Summer's house. Summer is a few days younger than Stella. Stella fed Summer rice cakes and it was very cute. But the bait and switch is quite something. She'll offer you food by fully-extending her arm. As this is happening, shell take a long, loving look at whatever it is (you can tell her brain is spinning) and as you're leaning over to accept it, she'll circle her arm back toward her. Whatever it is then goes into her mouth and, believe me, we're totally ok with it. She does this with toys too. She'll hand them over to share and then decide that sharing is a horrible idea and that she'd actually like the toys back.
2. Dance: If there is a commercial on TV or if her music table/toys play a song she likes, she will bounce up and down to the music. She also does a Kanye West style head bob sometimes that's hysterical. She LOVES American Idol. It's by far her favorite show and she stops whatever she's doing to just watch the commercials on TV. Maybe she has a crush on Simon Cowell. She also loves the Spice Girls and that song "Who Let the Dogs Out."
3. I play a Baby Einstein DVD in order to clip her nails. Because we have to switch the TV inputs to watch it, if the TV goes black but is still obviously on, she thinks her show is coming on. She does this thing where if I'm holding her on my hip (as I often do while fiddling with the TV), she'll swing her head in front of mine, make eye contact, smile and squeal when she thinks something she likes is on the horizon. She can be in the worst mood in the world but she'll do this if the TV goes black and her show is coming. She also does this when we're about to get in the elevator because if she's on my hip, she knows she's going to the playroom. She's in her stroller otherwise. She'll also do this if I open a certain cupboard door because her snacks are in there.
4. If one of us disappears to the other room and she wants to talk to or find us, she says, "Ah" once and pauses for a response. If we say, "Ah" back, she'll keep saying, "Ah" and wait for a reply until she finally crawls into our sight. She even does this to try to get the maids' attention when they are cleaning our room. They will disappear to the other room, she'll crawl in, look around and if she doesn't see them she'll say "Ah" and wait for them to say something.
5. She loves board books. All of a sudden, last week, she showed some interest in them and now they're all she wants to play with. I saw a poll on babycenter.com last week that asked parents if they ever skip pages in their children's books in order to speed up the process. I laughed. Now I get it. I probably read this one dog book a minimum of 30 times today. Dan bought these two Baby Einstein cat and dog small board books in order to get the VIP card at a baby store here. Now they are her favorite books. She digs them out of her toy buckets and then hands them to us to read aloud. And then again, and again, and again. I made myself carsick today reading the one dog book about 15 times on very a short taxi ride. Also, luckily, she loves "The Hungry Caterpillar" which was one of my favorites.
Lastly, she is sleeping like a champ. Sleep school was the best $300 we've ever spent. The sleep consultant adjusted her schedule based on a week of me logging her sleep and eating habits and gave us some other advice about this and that. No real crying was involved--Stella just settled into her new schedule and all of a sudden has been a consistently great sleeper. We've even been able to delay her nap and bed times an hour or two to go to boozy lunches with friends or parties with zero sleeping problems. And, her gross stuffy nose didn't interrupt her sleeping either. I just started being able to sleep decently as I've finally kicked the anxiety resulting from constantly waiting for her to wake up. She was waking every hour or two for a while.
All is well for the time being.
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