Have you ever noticed that children are like human sponges. When they reach a certain age they figuratively soak up everything around them and spit it back out. I've always heard this but very recently am learning firsthand the truth of it.
Lynlee is now one week shy of 17 months old and she is a human sponge. There are the things we've been actively trying to teach her (say please and thank you, dipping food into sauces, etc) but there are also a number of things we've noticed her doing that we haven't consciously been trying for:
- We've all had a fun month of being sick and have been blowing our noses a lot. I now need to put the tissues up high and close bathroom doors to keep toilet paper safe because she feels the need to blow her nose every 5 minutes. She then proceeds to use the same paper product to start cleaning everything (for the record, we blow our noses and clean surfaces with completely separate materials.)
- We give the cats a squirt with the water bottle if they are being naughty. Lynlee walks around after them with the water bottle making her own squirting noises as she is still trying to master the squeezing of the squirting trigger.
- We have some shoelaces we dangle about to play with the cats. She gets a hold of them and terrorizes the poor souls as she screams in delight and runs after them, waiving the laces high. They either run or lie down and cower, as demonstrated below.
- Talking on the phone. This is the cutest! I've given her my old flip phones to play with and the other day she had a full conversation on it, complete with pauses to let the other person speak and giggles at what they said.
Lynlee and I were playing on the stairs when I got a tickle in my nose and sneezed. She promptly said what I thought was "bless you" (sounded more like "bess oo") but there's no way, I thought, she's way too young for that. A few seconds later I sneezed again and this time there was no mistake. "bess oo." Little kid voices melt my heart. I said thank you as I wondered in amazement how a child only 16 months old could connect two things like that in her mind and formulate the appropriate polite response all within a second after it happened. I felt excited that in spite of having weak parents such as Chris and I, our daughter is observing things around her and learning. I giggled to myself that I was having all these thoughts race through my mind while she had already moved on and was picking at a piece of loose carpet on the stair.
A third time, "Achoo!"
"bess oo momma."
"Thank you Lynlee."
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