Today Cate is 16 months old. I meant to get her monthly milestone post written a lot earlier, but we were caught off guard with an unexpected house showing (our third!), and it threw off our whole day.

So! This month Cate has learned:
* The sign for “milk”! At last! I’ve been trying to teach that one to her since she was about 7 months old, and she just finally started doing it back a couple of weeks ago. She usually signs “eat” first, then signs “milk,” so there’s absolutely no mistaking what she wants.

* However, the sign for “eat/food” has become the default sign for everything she wants. Cup of water? Sign food. Sleepy? Sign food. Want to go outside? Sign food. It’s almost like her way of saying, “I want something, and now it’s up to you to figure it out.” It’s… challenging.

I’ve been trying to teach her the appropriate signs, but you know, it took her 9 months to get “milk” nailed down, so I think this process might take a while. And that’s fine, she’s just the type of kid who takes her time observing and thinking stuff over in her head before she gives it a try.

* She has a few new words: horsey is by far the most popular one right now, especially since we’ve been visiting the neighbors’ horses pretty much every day. And the other day at the park, she saw a dog who I guess kind of looked like Patsy’s dog (in that it was small and brown, but a totally different breed), and she said “Buddy!” (Patsy’s dog’s name). Oh, but one of my favorite developments is that she now says “hi” and “bye” appropriately.

She’s even got the bye-bye wave down, although she doesn’t do it in that video. The weird thing about her talking is that I’m pretty sure she has several other words that Dave and I can’t understand. She says them with the same inflection over & over, we just haven’t caught onto what she’s trying to tell us yet. Too bad there aren’t second language classes for speaking Toddler. I’m not sure which’ll come first, either we’ll figure it out or her enunciation will get clearer.

* Sort of along the lines of talking, but pretend play and mimicking are new milestones this month. The phone is the big thing. She’ll pick up her toy phone (or anything really – a hairbrush or the stick from her xylophone work just as well), hold it up to her ear, say “hello” (uh-llo), then she’ll jabber away for a while, throw in a couple of “yeah, yeah”s, and then she’ll say, “k, bye-bye!” and hang up. This slays me like you have no idea. Dave isn’t really a phone guy so I’m thinking she got pretty much all of this from me. (Although maybe a little from Patsy too, I know she talks to her sister at least once a day.)

* She gives kisses, and even makes a smacking sound when she does them. Oh, be still my heart. It’s too cute for words.

I know there are a ton of other little things that I’m forgetting. I could go on all day about how fantastically awesome and wonderful she is, and how she has Dave and I both on the floor laughing pretty much every day. But you know, I think this has been long enough.

Our girl rocks. Simple as that.