Sophia has been changing so much in the last few weeks. She seems more eager to interact socially ...not that she's ever been shy.
But she seems to be listening and trying to discriminate more carefully how words are formed and how to attach meaning to the things around her.
Her big cousin Emma taught her to hold up one finger in response to the question, "How old are you, Sophie?" For a while, whenever she saw Emma, and only when she saw Emma, she held up her one finger proudly. Now she shows everyone. She loves her impressive trick.
She also loves to wave to everyone (and even inanimate things) we see. It still sounds surprising even to me, whenever she so clearly articulates "Hi!" with her small and feathery soft voice.
Her gibberish also seems to be getting more serious, complex, and 'sophisticated'...and more imitative of our language. But she still really loves it when I respond to her in 'her' language with "doogle, doogle, oooh, bah-da, bop, pshoo, ....etc...." :)
Maya's new favorite word lately seems to be, "what?" My ears have become so immune to it, that I sometimes find myself repeating the same thing to her 5 times in a row...before I realize that she did in fact hear me the first time, she's just testing her powers. She thinks she's hilarious when she 'teases' us.
Her favorite story lately is Little Red Riding Hood. She has memorized much of the musical version that my students performed earlier this month. And we act it out at least once daily. We love to include other willing family and friends in our shows too (Uncle Andy made a great wolf...sinister and convincing. Similarly, Uncle Sean was described by Maya as "really silly, but... kinda scary").
This week, my students at school gave me a storybook of the 'real' Little Red fairy tale , beautifully illustrated, and signed by all of them. It's a pretty dark story. The wolf eats Granny and Little Red, and the heroic Hunter holds up his gun to the sleeping wolf's chest, then on second thought takes out his knife and slices open his belly rescuing Granny and Little Red.
I was hesitant to read it to Maya without editing, but she's pretty perceptive of my occasional attempts to alter what's written. So I read it on Tuesday when I came home from school. And by Wednesday, we'd read it so many times that she was familiar enough to correct any words I may have tried to skip. She still pretends to be scared rather melodramatically...I think she actually was a little nervous the first few times we read it, but she kinda likes to be scared (in a very 'safe' sort-of way)...
I wouldn't exactly call her a risk-taker, but she is a bit of a 'thrill seeker'.
