Busy Growing

This sweet flower is growing like a weed lately. Long legs, long feet, and lots of new language popping up every single day. She has such a curiously quirky personality- she thrives on inside jokes and made-up songs and recurring silly make-believe games (like reaching into a pretend pocket, pulling out a pretend duck, telling you what color it is, then handing it to you to eat... "Duck? Yeah? Oh... blue. Yum yum".. shoving the duck into your mouth. "Purple. Dada." Pats her pocket... saving the purple duck for Dada because it's his favorite color). At bedtime she is an alligator or a sea lion and I can't shut the door until I throw her a pretend fish to eat (upon catching the fish she lets out a joyous "Hurrah!" before eating it), then we must tell her to have "sweet purple hot dog dreams" (that one has evolved over time to include a few inside jokes).
I want to record more about her language acquisition soon, because it is absolutely fascinating. She uses a combination of real words, made up words (but always the same word for the same meaning, such as "vuh-vuh" for dog), real sign language, her own invented sign language, and motioning/gesturing in context. Recently she has begun to (correctly) use a few new phrases:
"Here you go"
"Me too"
"A couple more"
"Thank you"
Of course my favorite is the "thank you", which she says as "bec-oo", because I have never forced her or even asked her to say it... she just picked it up from every day conversations and now she says it all day long for everything. I get a little swell of happiness every time she says it, my sweet sweet baby lamb. "Bec-oo, Mama." She says it for all sorts of things: when I hand her a pile of clean laundry to fold, when I help her get a snack, when I tell her we're going to the beach or the park. I just love that she says it for little things and big things. Always the same cheerful "bec-oo, Mama", whether I just handed her a stack of bowls to put away or when I told her we were going to have ice cream for dinner.
She's so aware and attentive, thoughtful and deliberate. In life. In general. I love watching her personality unfold; watching her test out tricky little toddler ideas to see if they fit, where they fit, in with her other traits. Today she was jumping off a (low to the ground) chair, saying "1, 2, 1, 2 ... aaand JUMP!" I asked her where she learned that and she said "Daddy-O" (which is what she's been goofily calling Brady lately).
She and I have been having a not-so-easy time on our babysitting days, but luckily today we had a peaceful dinner after the kids left. While we were eating it was raining, which turned into a sun shower, so we scampered outside to look for rainbows. We ended up standing on the corner of the street, directly in the spot where the wall of rain ended. We could take one step to our left and stand in the rain shower, or one step to our right and be completely out of the rain. Looking up the hill we watched a giant, faint rainbow that stretched across the sky in almost a straight line. It was so magical! After it faded away we walked back into the rain towards home.
Millie is SO excited to go visit Grandma and Eve-the-cat in Cape Cod tomorrow! I have quite a few things on my packing list, but Millie insists the only thing we need to bring is apples. While she was in the tub tonight she was remembering the game of catch she played with Teta Annie at the beach last month. She talks about it all the time, but this time she really remembered all the details in order and made a sentence: "Teta, purple-yellow ball (+ tossing motion), beach 'adella' (water)", shakes her head, "haha, nooo Teta!" (meaning "silly Teta"). Maybe Teta can confirm, but I'm pretty sure it was a little football that was half purple and half yellow that they were throwing around.

Hopefully I'll be posting some pictures from the beach very soon!

Learning how to use scissors today

MRI success

We had great results from our MRI on Wednesday. I should have updated sooner but it takes a few days to recover from the whole process (for us that is... Millie was fine as soon as we hit the diner for lunch that day!). I'll spare you the details of the day and go straight to the results:

The images show that her spinal cord has moved up (which Dr. Wisoff said you don't always see in the first year), and that the mystery fluid at the base of her spine has shrunk (which he wasn't expecting). So, that good news means we don't need another MRI for 2 years! This is fantastic because of course we are concerned with the effects of the MRI process on her growing body and the number of them that she will eventually have.

The motion imaging results we got back later were not great- he would have liked to have seen the end if her spine completely free-flowing, but instead there were some pieces that were not moving. We will stick with the plan of no MRI next year, so we are figuring it's pointless to speculate why those pieces are not moving. There will be no way to know until next time (if even then). So far Millie has absolutely no physical impact from all of this. Dr. Wisoff was very impressed with her mobility and activity level, especially considering she had just been under anesthesia that same morning. Here are a couple of snaps from the day:

All of the pictures are from before, except for the last one which is a very happy girl celebrating by having lunch at a diner after.

MRI tomorrow!

After being postponed because of a fever, Millie finally has her MRI tomorrow morning at 7:30. We've rounded up the usual suspects for a hospital visit: a doll, new books, and apple juiceboxes. The nurse wants us to bring a diaper just in case (because of the medication). I was nervous about how Millie might react when I told her. Much to my surprise, she thinks it's the funniest thing she's ever heard! With a huge smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye, she grabbed her bum, said "dipe?", then told me she was going to do a "gross poop"! Just to double check I said "you're going to do a gross poop if I put a dipe on you?". "YUP!"

She's been laughing about it ever since and keeps making the same joke- sometimes she can't even finish saying it without bursting into laughter. At dinner I told her that soon we'll need to take the dog to the doctor's. She asked me if the cats will go too, and I said yes. She looked down at Shark sleeping and her eyes got big. "Ow (meow), dipe?" Much laughter ensued...

A favorite dinner of super nachos tonight to fill her belly:

Our first peace lily* bloomed this week, a good sign I think:

*the internet tells me this is actually not a peace lily, but I thought it was so I'm sticking to my original story :)