She slept restlessly for a lot of this past month. I thought it was spring, maybe, or the hard transition to one nap a day, or the damn canines finally settling into place… but now we think it was a language development upgrade running at night. Suddenly we have things like: Read, read book?, clock, bless you!, allons-y (usually followed by go go go, but all in a tumble of sound so it’s more like allonsygogogo!, which rather suits the emotion of the statement). She chirped “Congratulations!” to Sparky after I said it when he finished Pokemon Black the other week. She calls snow “no,” which is what a lot of us feel about it at this time of year, frankly. And we have “Merci bye-bye!” followed by a serious blown kiss, which is generally reserved for the people at the deli counter in the grocery store who give her a slice of pretty much anything she points at while I’m ordering freshly cut cold meat. She thinks the deli counter is her personal buffet. They would have started slicing the cheese she pointed at with a charming grin and a “This?” if I hadn’t stopped them a couple of weeks ago. And we are finally starting to get animals identified by more than the sound they make. We actually heard her say “horse” the other day, and “dog.” Rabbits are hophops, though she calls her blanket bunny Bunny.

Sentences are starting to be more common. “Bird!” she said the other day when we were walking in a parking lot, leaning back and pointing gup. “Fying! Sky!” When I queried her, she strung them all together: “Bird fying sky!” And then there was “Here, Ee-yah, put cup here.” After which Sparky turned to HRH with wide eyes, saying, “She just said a whole sentence and I understood her!”

But the most hilarious language-related development is her use of the word ‘delicious.’ She may have picked it up from us, because when she pretends to feed us something we generally say, “Mmm, delicious.” So when we ask her, for example, “Is your mushroom good?” we are rewarded with “EeeeeeeISHush!” And she says it with such gusto that we can’t help laughing. But the other day, HRH caught her putting something into her mouth: “Wait, what have you got in your mouth? Open. Open! Is it a sticker?” So we checked, but there was nothing. We turned back to getting supper ready, and I said, “Well, whatever it was, it’s gone now. I hope it was good.” And from behind HRH and I came: “EeeeeeeISHush!”

Firsts this month include her first taste of tire d’érable on snow (I picked up a small jar of tire, HRH scooped up some clean snow from the back of the house, I warmed the tire up in the microwave and poured it on the snow for the kids; it’s the closest we’ll come to cabane a sucre, because they’re shockingly expensive and honestly, I hate most of the food apart from the tire), first homemade playdough, and her first serious watercolour painting and finger-painting. Someone adores painting in every form. (Also note: neither of these were finger-painting sessions. That didn’t stop her from using the technique.)

Grandma taught her how to play Ring Around the Rosie, and she made poor Grandma play it a billionty times in a row. She had her first real phone conversation, too, with Daddy. She did her first Easter Egg hunt, which was lots of fun:

She wore a pretty periwinkle blue dress with a blue-green floral chiffon skirt at Easter (I think it was Wynter’s—does it look familiar, Annika?), but every single photo is blurred because she couldn’t stop darting around at her grandparents’ house. So we’re going with the arty one that looks blurry on purpose:

Ceri and Scott passed along Ada’s booster seat, and while Owlet thought it was the best thing ever for about a week, she started resisting it, likely because she prefers to sit or kneel on a regular chair. So we only use her wooden high chair at supper now; all other meals she gets a real chair. Which is kind of funny, because she runs to it and hauls herself up onto the seat on her tummy, but usually gets her head stuck under the table while doing it.

She loves playing with the iPad, so much so that we have to have strict rules about when she can play with it and for how long. (Out of sight, out of mind is the best way to deal with it, we have discovered.) Her favourite app is Endless ABC, and she can rearrange the jumbled letters and drag them to their shadows in remarkably impressive time. She took the letter L off the fridge the other day and waved it at me, going “Luh-luh-luh-LUH-luh-luh” like the letter L in the game does when you try to drag it into the correct spot. So, er, hello, knowledge sponge. She loves the Kids CBC app and sings along with the Dirt Girl theme song, and is starting to get into matching/Memory game apps. But she also loves the simplicity of Fantasy Music Box and the Little Fox Music app, which she likes for the songs as well as the studio section where she can touch different things to make noises and sounds against a beat.

She came up to me one morning while I was casting on for a toddler sweater I’m test-knitting for an acquaintance, and said, “Eit? Eit?” I thought she was saying eight, because she was looking at the ends of the needles where the size is printed, so I told her no, they were size 7s. She took the needles away from me and clicked the tips together a few times. Turns out she was saying, “Knit? Knit?”

At the thrift shop the other day we found not one but two pairs of barely-used shoes for her. One is a just-fit for now (purple lace-up ankle boots! she saw them and pestered me till I handed them to her, and then she yanked off her boots and tried to shove them on her feet by herself) and the others are a pair of suede t-straps, a size or two bigger for this fall. That day after her nap, she insisted that she put on the ones she had picked and she stomped around in them all afternoon, very pleased with herself. I got a parcel in the mail that day and there was bubble wrap in it, so Sparky put it on the floor and showed her how to stomp on it. She made very satisfying sounds with those shoes on!

On the same thrift store trip I found an older Little People house there for three dollars, which was missing the doors and didn’t come with any furniture or people, but she adores it. She is especially fascinated with the bathroom, and has given all the Little People and equivalent sized figures we have a turn on the potty and several baths. On another thrift store trip we scored a little china tea set for $2, and the tea parties began! We’ve already misplaced the creamer and the green cup has broken, but that’s not slowing anyone down.

She walked up to stand next to me in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago, and sang, “Tiyul, tiyul, i-al STAH… howAwaaa-aaawha-ooAAAAH.” And she kept going, looking at me with a tiny smile on her face. At the end she grinned and started clapping for herself. She sings along with stuff, but I’ve never heard her voluntarily sing a whole song on her own before. She randomly does bits of the alphabet song, and requests “Baa Baa Black Sheep” often during diaper changes. We’ve started to listen to a playlist just for her in the car with some of her favourite songs on it, and after each one she says, “Thank you!” She’s such a sparkling, giggly, drop of pure sunshine. Sure, things get cranky and hard, and teeth are jerks, as Ceri says; but she’s a sunny little thing. We’re fortunate parents–again.