dynamic elf

dbang posting about cuddle time with her kids reminded me about how happy I am that N is a creature fueled by cuddles. When she's feeling rowdy but cuddly, she will often invent games where she runs off to do something and then runs back to tacklehug me, and then runs off and runs back for another hug, and so on. Today, when I got home, she insisted that I pick her up so that she could kiss me on the cheek. Also unbearably adorable: she and little S will now give each other big hugs when they haven't seen each other for a while.

Sleep is still up and down, though worlds better than it was a few months ago; she wakes up once about an hour or so after she goes down for the night, and once or maybe twice again through the night. None of them is a real wake-up, though, and since we currently cosleep, they usually can be solved by resnuggling her and giving her a bit of milk. (Please, no sleep advice. I do feel things are under control.) But last night, she just would not settle down. I lay down with her and even though she was clearly tired, there was just no going to sleep in that little girl. After maybe half an hour of this, she reached up with one hand and gently stroked the side of my face with two or three fingers, and then smoothed my hair and looked into my eyes and said, very solemnly, "mama.", as if to say "there there, mama, don't worry, you'll go to sleep eventually."

I'm happy to say that the recreational shrieking in protest and constant smirky limit-pushing are both on hiatus, too! I am enjoying this. Also, it would seem that this week she started sometimes understanding the reasons we say "no". I've been trying to give her a simple reason why I won't do some of the things she asks me to -- that would hurt, or that would be messy, or that might break, or that's too hot, or even we're doing thing A first and then we'll do thing B. It didn't seem to have much effect, at first, but now, she will basically accept 'no' if it comes with an explanation.

[HURT]? A really useful sign. She's had this one for a little over a month, and when it first sank in what "hurt" meant, she was pretty fascinated by the concept. Fascinated to the point of experimentally hitting us with stuff, or pinching my cheeks and asking me if it hurt or not. It didn't take long for her to figure out that we didn't like that. :)

She's getting really good at complicated handshapes, and she's picking up signs for stuff she wants to talk about very quickly. Also, she's getting a bit more adventurous with the vocalizations; if I don't give her a sign for something, she might just tell me what it is. Yesterday, she was in her high chair, eating something uninteresting-to-girls, and she pointed at my hummus and signed [FOOD].

"Yeah, I'm eating, too!"
"Hama."
"...Yes! Yes, it is hummus..."
[FOOD] "Hama!" [POINT]
"All right! You can have some hummus, too!"

That made her pretty happy. Later on, she even performed for D when he got home ("What's this, Natalie? What's this?" "Hama!") which she's usually too proud to do.

She also seems to be decent at following complicated instructions ("No, don't crawl up the stairs, come down and sit and wait for me"), but it's possible I just give context-appropriate obvious warnings and she can read me like a board book. My face is not exactly subtle.

We've decided that the proper response to saying "Ohhhh, WHO'S the CUTEST little thing in the WORLD?!" or whatever is to say "Shaft!" in a perky voice. Mind, I've only ever done it to myself.

I um. There was more! There was. She's cute. This is a good stage. I don't post as much about the hard things, because I spend so much time trying to figure out how to post about something that's difficult without sounding like a whiner or someone who's ungrateful; as a result, I never wind up posting, because I recognize that I'm happy overall and so I don't get around to it. Also, it feels weirdly like airing relationship details in LJ, which I don't personally go for. I'd like to figure out a way around this, but not now. Now, bed.