You turn your back for a minute...

shick, shick, shick...shick, shick, shick

I heard that noise for about for 30 seconds before I turned around to see that Holly had gotten ahold of a small container of baby powder and was shaking it all over the floor with glee. I don't use baby powder very often (only when I'm reusing gloves for colouring my hair), so I guess this was the first time Holly had encountered the material. When I finally discovered the carnage she had made, she ran off giggling, leaving a trail of powdered footprints in her wake.

Naturally I went to grab the camera, returning to find her rolling around in the powdered mess. I could stop her or I could take photos of her. I chose the latter.

Holly on the Swings

Thanks to Charlie for taking this video on her iphone

All the Words Holly Can Say*

Mamma, DaDa, baby, goal (Ice Hockey), shoe, star, copt (Helocopter), kitty, koo (Kangaroo), ball, fishee, tree (which applies to tree, plants and aquatic plants), book, bird, toes, peas, straw (strawberries), cheese, cheeries (Cheerios), Nana, blue, socks, cow, soon (Spoon), buba (Bubbles), bear, peng (penguin), Wawa (water), Pretty, boat, shee (sheep), cay (cake), dee (dessert), tee (teething ring), cah (carrots), cello, bah (Balloons), bath, Srah (Our friend Sarah), poo, bye, dass (dance)

I think it's a lot of words for a 13-month old. Amazingly, she doesn't just mimic words, but seems to understand their concepts as well. Today is Holly's friend Luke's 1st birthday party, and as I was putting out a dress for her to wear she pointed at it and said "pretty" and smiled. I have never described that object as pretty, but she knows what it means.

She's just on the verge of being able to say "Plane". She has a picture of it in her word book. She points to it and then points up in the sky, as to say "that's where the plane is".

If I say bath, she runs to the bathroom to get ready for her bath. If I say helicopter, she gets excited and runs to the window saying "copt". While we were having breakfast I was talking to Jaime and said "penguin" (as in I wish I could get that penguin shaped waffle-maker) and Holly said "peng" and pointed to the penguin that was on the bib she was wearing. And today I made the mistake of saying "Nana" (a word she's just learned) and she ran to the front door because she thought we were going to my mum's place. She was very disappointed when I told her mum is away for the weekend and we weren't going there.

I suppose it's natural that she'll be an early bloomer in the talking department; Jaime and I are real talkers and I never shut up.

* List soon to be out of date

I Am Become Holly, Destroyer of Block Towers

Holly Just Said...

"Poo Poo Baby"

She wasn't lying.

I love to hear her laugh.

Emerging from the Plague House!

There's a nasty bug that everyone in Vancouver seems to have at the moment. I can only speculate that everyone thrown together in mirth during the Olympics must been a nice vector of infection. Poor Jaime came down with it first during the Olympics and was sick for over a month. Cough, cough, cough, poor guy. He had to take almost a week off work.

Then Holly came down with it too. Her first ever cough (she's had a few head colds before). To make it worse, she came down with it the afternoon after having her 12 month inoculations for Measles, Mumps, Rubella, Chicken Pox, Meningitis and Pnuemo. So the poor baby was miserable with a cough, fever and general aches, and then ten days later she came down with mild chicken pox symptoms, and then a few days later, Measles symptoms. She was a very unhappy baby.

Then I came down with it and ended up in hospital with asthma-like wheezing. It was awful; it really was. It took ages for us all to get over it; However, we are all better now.

Coincidentally, I was selected by a Mum's blogging group to try a bunch of new HydraSense* products for babies with colds. They sent me a bunch of saline, and this new nasal aspirator for clearing baby's blocked nose. As Holly did not have a blocked nose, I couldn't really give it a try, though it does look like this would work a lot better than the old bulb-syringe method. However, the saline was great for her sore nasal passages. It obviously made her feel better, as she would actually let me squirt the water up her nose.

Anyway, lets hope that's all our sickness over with for a while.

*Full disclosure: I wrote this post while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central and received a Mom Central gift pack to thank me for taking the time to participate.