Chatterbox

Dave and I were trying to figure out how many words Dillon has right now. The guestimate was 50. Then we actually started putting them down on paper. We came up with 77 words! Not all of those are understandable by anyone other than us (or me), but they are all deliberate, consistent sounds with deliberate, consistent intent. I had thoughts of listing them all but since it took 45 minutes to get her to go to sleep, I'm too tired to list that many words. She seems to add new ones each day, though. Over the last couple of days it has been "kick," "off" and "pull." She likes to run through many of her favorite words while I am rocking and nursing her to sleep. Methinks its a clever ploy to keep herself awake...hmmm......

We went to a picnic at the home of the anesthesia department chair yesterday. He throws this big picnic each year at his beautiful 100+ year old home on the Connecticut River. It was really a lot of fun and Dillon had a great time roaming around in all the wide open space. There were several big dogs there that she was pretty excited about until one of them came and stole food out of her hand and knocked her down. I don't think this poor dog knew what happened-- all of the sudden this small person is crying loudly and there are about 3 people yelling at it to get away. I'm sure whatever small bite of food it scored was not worth all that. She was a little freaked out by the dogs after that, but did eventually get to where she wanted to pet one of them that was lying down.

We did get to go swimming the other day. The pool is really nice! It starts at no depth at all and very gently slopes to 4 feet, but over a pretty good distance. Most of the bigger kids that can swim either stay in the other regular sized pool or in the deeper part of the kiddie pool, so it's a pretty safe place for little ones that don't swim. She wasn't sure about it at first and would only stand in the water for a few seconds before she wanted out. So we'd walk around and she would want to try it again. She got to where she would get in to about waist deep. She seemed to have good time. It's supposed to be pretty warm over the next several days, so I'd really like to take her again. Besides, I met someone at the picnic that has a son that just a month older. She & I had a great time chatting and it would be a good excuse to get together again.

I have pictures to post but it doesn't seem to want to work tonight. I"ll try to get it to tomorrow. It's time for bed.