Apart!

Vanessa has grown up so much in just this month! She has started exploring her world at warp speed! After her usual banging of pots and lids together, she climbed into the kitchen cabinets for the first time today. She likes to climb up the steps at the playground and go down the slide on her own (I still spot her of course). She always wants to climb in her high chair and stroller on her own, and sometimes gets upset if I try to help.

She has developed a fascination with the moon and insists on looking for it every night just before bedtime. She also has a keen interest in keys (dare I say obsession?).

When asked to, she loves finding her eyes, teeth, hair, toes, and belly button. She's signing lots of new words (imperfectly yet consistently), including penguin (this is really cute, because the sign involves a sort of waddling motion, and she makes kind of a honking noise at the same time), blueberry, banana, bread, cracker, cold, hairbrush, children, cat, rock, danger, spinning, and light. (It's funny that she still doesn't have a sign for eat or drink, and sometimes I don't know that she's hungry until she gets grouchy!) She also recognizes the letter O, and says "O!" whenever she sees one. I think other letters are not far behind, because she runs to her magnet letters whenever she hears a name of one she recognizes.

I have a funny story about her using a new sign. We were over at James's parents' house. Vanessa was playing with Duplo's, something she had never done before. I was sticking some of them together so that they would be not too difficult to take apart if they were pulled in the right way. Vanessa was rapidly getting very frustrated with not being able to get them apart. In fact, in just a few seconds, she got so mad that she was wailing. Then she signed "crying!" She was trying to make sure that I got the picture -- she was mad! Or maybe, she heard herself crying and was simply identifying it! Then, to her surprise, the Duplo's came apart. She was so excited she burst out laughing! It was a very emotional experience for her (and for me -- I was almost in tears from laughing myself!).

Vanessa and her Duplo's.
Nana and Vanessa, and Vanessa being very proud of herself!

Vanessa enjoys looking through partially transparent substances. Thus, to keep down on oatmeal in her hair, I generally use opaque bowls now!

This is one of her more common teething expressions. Each new tooth that comes in seems to be more painful than the last for Vanessa. Hopefully soon she'll be able to tell me when they hurt the worst.
I don't even know what kind of expression this is! Haha!

We went to a local fall festival. There was a petting zoo with llamas, pot-bellied pigs, and all kinds of other animals. Vanessa's favorites were the bunnies!

We tried fingerpainting some pumpkins with Revie and Grace today. Vanessa wasn't too comfortable with it! This is the second time we've tried fingerpainting, and again Vanessa didn't really warm up to it. She does like drawing with crayons (possibly because of their taste), but I think she still has a ways to go before becoming an artist!
I hope that when Vanessa is older, she won't mind that I posted this picture of her first time on her potty! She is fully clothed, after all. When she first saw her potty, she carried it around the house for a while before putting it back in the bathroom, and spent a good deal of time trying to step in it and on it before finally being content to sit on it! I'm definitely not going to try to potty train her any time soon, but I figure it's a good time to introduce the idea of a potty since she's been so good about telling me when she needs a diaper change.