Jibber Jabber

Those cute little lips have been going a mile a minute lately. 

It's unbelievable how quickly Penelope has gone from mumbling a handful of words to speaking non-stop in phrases and even sentences.

And boy, does she have a lot to say!

Up until two weeks ago there were two things that she refused to say, no matter how hard we urged her. The first was her name. She'd repeat one word after another to us, but whenever we said, "Penelope", she'd stop and just point to her chest. Finally, she randomly said her name when we were looking at family photos. Of course all four syllables are too much for her right now, so she has taken to calling herself "Pey-Pey." 

The other thing she refused to say was, "I love you." Try as we might to get her to repeat that phrase, Penelope would just keep her mouth shut and just smile. Then, two weeks ago when I was tucking Penelope into bed she surprised us. I always lay her down, pat her back and then say, "Good night. I love you." This time, right after I said good night, Penelope rolled over, looked up at me and exclaimed, "I love you!" That just about melted my heart.

Penelope has been well acquainted with time-out since a couple months ago. Let's just say that she likes to test the boundaries. Lately she's been rehearsing the things that she has had to go to time-out for. "No throwing cup!" "No drink bath water!" "No eat to-to (playdough)!" We'll be sitting on the couch reading, and she will randomly turn to me and say, "No throw book." I'm not sure if all of this is to remind me or to remind herself of the rules. Unfortunately all that reminding has not kept her out of frequent time-out sessions lately. Yesterday she was helping me in the garden and had to go to time-out for repeatedly pulling off the tops of my plants. A couple hours later when I went go get her out of her crib after her nap, the first words out of her mouth were, "No hurt Mama's plant!" Yes, Penelope, that's right. 

Lil' P also loves to express herself through music. She's always been quite the dancer, but lately she's taken to singing. Her favorite tune as of late is the ever-popular ABC song. Penelope, however, has her own version of the alphabet. According to Penelope it goes: "ABCD ABCD QRS YZ" and instead of the chorus, "Now I know my ABC...", Penelope has revised it to, "No more ABC's, no more ABC's" That's right. Penelope has officially declared that we only need 9 letters instead of 26.