We are all sick with colds over here, and I am sort of miserably tired. Maren had a fever Saturday afternoon and most of yesterday. She and I stayed home from daycare/work today. A photo from Saturday night:
Maren was not feeling well enough to eat anything at dinner, but we offered her a variety of things just in case. The closest she came to eating was stuffing peas into a medicine spoon. She seems to be feeling better as of this afternoon, so hopefully we are nearly done with being sick.
A few weeks ago, Jeff took Maren grocery shopping and they saw these fancy tiny little pears called Forelle pears. Maren spent the entire grocery trip eating one of these little pears, and has been somewhat obsessed ever since. The other day Jeff finally brought some home from the grocery store, and Maren has been carrying them around the house almost constantly for the past couple of days. Here she is yesterday with one of her Forelle pears, which, by the way, she says almost perfectly.
Also a couple of weeks ago, my graduate advisor came to Regina to give a talk. It was wonderful to see her, and the talk was well received. Maren did not say her name (Jennifer) until many hours after they had met, but now she says "Jeffuff" whenever she hears the name Jennifer, or anything that sounds like it, including gender, general, generate, etc. So here is a picture of all of us together with Jeffuff:
Last night as I was putting Maren to bed, she suddenly looked up at me and said "noodle (pause) butt." I was not sure what she was trying to say, so I repeated back "noodle butt?," and she said "No. Noodle butt." She kept repeating this, and I kept not understanding.
Then this morning, she was looking at a book that we got from the library (we have checked out this book probably two other times), and it was finally clear that what she was trying to say was nudibranch, which is similar to a sea slug, and pictured in the book.
Maren's language is kind of crazy. She is starting to string words together, and is repeating almost everything we say, even if she doesn't understand it yet. Tonight at dinner she said "mommy eat it" then "daddy eat it," then "baby eat it," when deciding who should eat each pea. Here are a few videos from today – they are kind of long, so watch at your own risk, but I think they are amazing because they showcase Maren's awesome language development. The first one has the nudibranch.
Just yesterday, Maren discovered that she can pull her toy duck train around the house. She loves it.
She came down with a cold and has unfortunately not been feeling too well today. This is the first cold in over two months though, so we are not complaining.
Things have been busy, and I always want to post more (especially when things have been busy and there is lots to post about), but alas, I don't have adequate time. Hopefully sometime in the next couple of weeks things will settle down and I can catch up!
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