The Power of a Child

This past week at work was a stressful one, I had a big deadline on Friday and as a result was at the office until 11pm Thursday night. Once I did get home and to bed I didn't sleep well at all, I just kept thinking about all of things that had to get done the next day to meet the deadline. Before I knew it it was the 5 o'clock hour and time to try to get out of bed. As soon as it was time to get Penelope out of bed however, the stress and worrying dissipated. It was just Penelope and me and our morning routine. I didn't even have to try to stop thinking about the work stress, it just wasn't there. My improved mood continued all the way to the office where the day actually wasn't nearly as bad as I had feared it would be the night before. Anyway, in short, I was amazed at what a difference an hour and half of taking care of Penelope made on my mental state. It was transformative.

Penelope's Tricks

it has been awhile since we have detailed some of Penelope's tricks; the latest ones include:

* blowing her nose - sort of, she holds the tissue in the right place and sort of blows her nose

* blowing kisses

* kicking a soccer ball

* picking out books and bringing them to you, then backing up into you and dropping into your lap so you can read them to her

* giving Hi-5s - this is actually an old one sort of, she used to hi-5 you then push your hand down, now it's more of a straight up hi-5

* finding and bringing you a ball if you ask her to - most of the time

Corn Meal Part 2

Who would have believed that Penelope's birthday only got one post, but Corn Meal is going to get two...

So yesterday I was eating cereal and Penelope pointed to it as if she wanted some, so I gave her a piece (it was Corn Chex). After doing so, I thought I better check the list of ingredients (being the slightly delayed good mother that I am). It turns out that the first ingredient is.....cornmeal. Since then she has been "asking" for my cereal more and more often.

Corn Meal

Maybe Penelope does have some Indiana blood running through her because one of the things she will consistently eat these days is things made from corn meal. She has previously expressed a like for cornbread, cornbread muffins etc..., but this weekend we learned of her (at least temporary) love of polenta. She went to a Brazilian steakhouse with us this weekend for her dad's birthday and could not get enough of the polenta they kept bringing! Beef, no! Lamb, no! Delicious things from the salad bar? NO! She had a brief stint of eating nothing but the mashed potatoes they brought out, but one bite of the polenta and there was no going back!

B Words

I think we have to make it official, Penelope's first word was ball, and has been followed by balloon - which not surprisingly sounds very similar to ball. But in general she seems to do the "B" sounds pretty well. This has made me realize how many "B" words there are that are important to a 14 month old. For example, blueberries, "Brown Bear Brown Bear," book, banana, "bye bye." The only one of these that she may have down is "bye bye" or something like it. There's something that I think is "Brown Bear Brown Bear," but it sounds more like "BraaBraa BraaBraa" said very quickly.