Travel-hoes and Rabbit Feet

This morning Amelia looked at her cereal and gleefully announced "Travel-hoes!!" as she dug in with her spoon. From the other room Daddy said, "Aren't those the girls that follow rock bands around, like groupies?" I said, no, it's Amelia's Cheerios.

Pronunciations are funny. Yesterday she named Thomas and Percy, but it came out Thomas and Pussy.

After breakfast I was getting dressed. When I came back into the kitchen Amelia was sitting on a cow pillow with her mooing cow moving in front of her. I think she's developing a fondness for cows. She'll say "Cow!" and then "Moo!" She may not actually have a preference for cows since she loves her "Pig book!" (If You Give a Pig a Pancake) and now says "Oink!" after naming any pig she sees.

When I fed her chicken at lunch, I told her what she was eating, like I usually do, and she said, "Bock bock bock!" and proceeded to eat her chicken with no compassion whatsoever for the animal, even though she had apparently made the connection. So she's like her daddy - not only does she loves to eat meat (and she does), it's incidental to her that a living, breathing animal died to provide her with protein.

Getting back to the scene in the kitchen ... it wasn't a cow-inclusive scene. She had her bunny slippers on when she first sat down and then proceeded to take them off, saying "Rabbit feet off, rabbit feet off." She's been saying rabbit for a week or so now, and it is so adorable (to me) the way she says it - usually without the "r". The picture really doesn't capture the cuteness of the scene.

I am amazed at the words she knows that I didn't teach her, which means she picked them up somewhere else, or that I only told her once. She has a lift-the-flap book that has cupcakes under one of the flaps and she has remembered that word ever since the first time I told it to her. I forget that she knows the word and am amazed when she correctly names the cupcakes. But there are other words like chips - which she wanted in the grocery store the other day - that I didn't teach her and happens to be a food we don't eat. That makes me wonder where she might be getting chips. Then today in the store I was trying hair bows on her (but didn't name them) and she was running around patting her head, saying "Hair bow! Hair bow!" She knew what they were without me telling her. And no, they didn't stay in long.

When she falls or runs up against something she'll run to me, without crying, and point to whatever body part that has been affected, name it and then cry. Kissing it or holding her doesn't make it better, though. She prefers if I just make a sad face and say, "Poor baby!" Then she laughs and runs off.

This naming of the body part is not only cute (I'm her mother, everything is cute except the biting and scratching), but it's really helpful when she does have a fall to know what she hurt. As Daddy pointed out, her communication skills have really improved.

Every stage is still so wonderful. I remember being amazed at her when she was 5 months old. Now I see small babies and think how helpless they are. I just adore my toddling wonder who is growing up so fast!

[pictures dated 8/25/07]