Run and Squeak and Squawk with the Animals

I'll be honest. After the heady milestone monitoring days of the first year of LG's life, I'm a little burnt out on worrying about whether she's sitting/crawling/walking/talking according to a particular schedule. Now, this may sound like the kind of thing that someone whose child isn't meeting those milestones might say. But truth be told, I'm at the point where I don't really think about it much anymore.

Instead, I find myself thinking the following: Is she struggling with anything day-to-day? Does she learn something new every week? Is she having fun?

As long as I have a satisfactory answer to those questions (and the doctor doesn't tell me to worry about something), I'm just going to go with the flow.

And the flow over the last few weeks has been all about animal noises. It probably started some time close to when we visited the zoo and she walked through the reptile house going "HssssssHssssss." A day or so latter, Hollie was driving her somewhere, singing Old MacDonald, and when she got to ducks, LG started shouting "kack kack kack" (give her a break! 'Q's are hard.)

Since then, her animal vocabulary has grown daily. Will she say "doggy"? Nope. But she'll say "uf uf uf" when you mention dogs. Bring out her favorite owl, and all you'll hear for the next five minutes is "hooooooohoooooo."

These Melissa & Doug puzzles may have helped somewhat, although, to be perfectly honest, most of the animals sound like they're talking over a bad drive-thru speaker.

 

Despite that, she will "moo," occasionally "meow," and very proudly and loudly "BAAAAA!" whenever she sees a sheep. Seriously, a couple of her books have sheep in them, and she'll stop you from reading, grab the book and shout "BAAAA!" You just have to wait until she's done.

And if she doesn't know the sound it makes, it quacks.

She loves the monkey noise, which sounds a lot like an owl, but much gruffer. And she's pretty good at the elephant, pressing her lips close together and blowing like a trumpet.

Excuse the messy shirt. I just had pasta with red sauce.

I really wish I could get some video of this, but I've got to be sneaky. As soon as she sees the camera, she becomes single-mindedly focused on running away with it, and she usually wins.