Fork You, Fork You, Fork You, Whose Next?

Abigail is growing more and more each day. I had to travel for the past two weeks for work to Australia and Singapore which made being away that much harder. I wouldn’t have been so bad if I was in the same time zone but being 12 hours ahead was slightly torturous. Calling home to hear “mama” was almost impossible since Josh was playing single daddy and dropping her off at day care before the crack of dawn. But it is all over now and I have come home to a beautiful smiling face:

Okay, I missed Josh too. I didn’t want you to think I didn’t miss him. It is one thing to be away from him but a whole other thing to be away from Abigail. What made it worse was that Josh and I have not been apart for this amount of time since we have been married. Pathetic, I know. I guess we just like hanging out with each other. Back to Abigail...

We pretty much have a full fledged toddler on our hands. She now rarely falls down and is even climbing the stairs at home when it is bed time. She understands bath, bed, cat and will give kisses. Granted they are open mouth, slobbery kisses but I don’t care. Abigail also started to say a few more words! We had been working on baby signs for the word more. You are supposed to put your fingers together like this kid is doing.

However, she thought that sign was funny when we were teaching it to her. Instead of mimicking us and doing the sign, she would take our hands and make the sign while laughing as if to say “this is fun!” So we just kept doing it and saying “more”. She sort of caught on right before I left but when I came back, she would put one finger to her palm (close enough) and say “Moah”. It is close enough to “more”. No really, it is! She also says “Mama” and “Daddy” more clearly. What was more miraculous was that she will wave and say “Hi”. She was even clever enough to put the two words together to say her first real sentence “Hi Daddy”. Josh was absolutely thrilled.

Last night Abigail decided she wanted to use my fork as I was putting more food on her plate (she asked for more!). Since my fork has sharp tines, I got her one of her baby forks. She very skillfully stabbed at her meatloaf and a piece stuck! Carefully she turned the fork and put the middle of the fork in her mouth. Strike 1! Then she stabbed the plate again and put the back end of the fork in her mouth. Strike 2! She realized that it wasn’t working like she wanted it to so she turned the fork around completely and the food got into her mouth! Josh and I were clapping and since she got such a positive response from us, she tried again. Success! Of course then she threw the fork on the floor…I guess she was done with dinner!

It is amazing the leaps she makes every day and I know that she is going to be in kindergarten before I know it. I just try to treasure each and every day, step and milestone.