more new stuff

so last night i finally came to my senses and accepted nissa's label for me. it's something like "baba." i figured it out when she was downstairs with adam and i was upstairs making dinner. i could hear her standing at the gate, yelling for me. she even pushed hard enough to open the gate on her own and headed up to see me. how can you argue with that? i had dinner mostly ready at that point, just finishing up dessert, so i was ok with having the company and she even helped me stir the pudding i was working on for dessert.

and the dessert was fabulous. best chocolate pudding was very appropriate, as identified by smitten kitchen. yum yum yum.

while i didn't see this first hand, this info came from grandma a, so it's the next best thing. grandma a was generous enough to come over saturday night to free up adam and i to start looking through the attic. we've got lots of stuff up there that desperately needs to find a new home so we can have room to work on the attic. we plan to construct a bedroom up there for us, so nissa can have her own room once her sibling comes along. it's a while away yet, but construction is not an overnight thing, so it's time to get started! anyways. . . saturday morning nissa and i hung out with rocio and her niece lola. we went out to a forest preserve to learn more about maple syrup. it was vaguely interesting, but the kids mostly liked the inside of the info center where there were all kinds of things to check out in a very age-appropriate way. both the girls ended up enjoying an eagles nest that put them a few feet off the ground in a plexiglass box that was wrapped in branches. i took pictures of nissa looking through the branches at me. we had a good chuckle while doing so. in the evening, grandma a was sitting with nissa looking at the pictures and when nissa got to the shots of her in the nest, she started laughing. we're pretty sure she remembered being there and was laughing at the fun she had. i did not know 16 month olds could do that!?!?



the other thing i didn't know a young 'un could do is understand 2-D abstract pictures. specifically, nissa has a sippy cup that features 3 dogs (maybe a cat in the middle? i'm not sure) and the "front" one is chasing a bouncing ball. you know it's bouncing, because of the action lines. . . but there is no shading to suggest a sphere, just circle. last thursday i gave nissa this cup with some water in it and she pointed to the ball and said "ball." this is, by the way, one of her new words, which she really enjoys. i responded with "yes, that's right, ball. and these are puppies" and she got all excited about the puppies (another favorite word to say). and all i can say is wow.