Loves Music, Loves to Dance

Elisabeth loves to sing, to listen to music and loves to dance. Notice her fancy footwork. Usually she just wiggles in time to the music but today she pulled out the steps.

Apparently she digs David Archuleta.



Also notice I don't know how to use the camera properly.

From the mouths of babes

Elisabeth is slowly improving her verbal skills. She will sometimes say a word clearly one day and then never to repeat it for weeks and weeks. Every word she uses is purposeful and her vocabulary is growing more and more everyday. Thanks to our long-time Finnish visitors (who will have been at our house for a total of six weeks when they leave) she is also becoming bilingual.

Here are some of the things she says on a regular basis:

• Mama
• Dog
• anna ("give me" in Finnish)
• ei ("no" in Finnish)
• kiitos ("thank you" in Finnish)
• eeese (her version of "please")
• hes (her version of "yes")
• nana (you guessed it. . . "banana")
• Dada
• all done
• gampa ("grandpa")
• gamma ("grandma")
• ny-ny ("good night")
• up
• baak ("book")
• Nona (her babysitter)
• woof woof (actually, her bark sounds more of a soft grunt - hmmm, hmmm)
• choo-choo (everytime she hears the train go by our house)
• uh oh
• hi
  

She can sign "more", "please," "thank you," "eat," and "all done." As you can guess from her round cheeks, she signs "eat" quite often through the day. This one sure loves to eat!

The most recent phrase to come out of our little music lover's mouth was "do it again" after we were done singing a hymn at church today. Lance and I couldn't believe we heard her say this.

About a two months ago, Lance brought her in to our bedroom for her morning feeding (As of July 5th, she is officially weaned, however.) She started to eat and then stopped, looked up into my eyes and said as clear as clear can be "Hi Mama." She then proceeded to return to her feeding. Talk about melting my heart! I regret to say she hasn't done that since.

She also loves to "sing" along to songs she loves while we are driving in the car. This repertoire includes "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star," "The Wheels on the Bus," anything Disney and Starship's "We Built this City."

I cherish these simple moments with her amidst the stress and busy-ness of life in graduate school.