Here we are.... ONE month until my sweet girl turns ONE!  Can't believe it!

Here are the highlights from this last month!

* She has 4 teeth (two top and two bottom)

* Her new favorite game is to run away from us and have us chase her... she thinks it's HILARIOUS and laughs, and laughs when we say "I'm going to get you!!" :-)  

* She learned the sign for "more" this month and can now use "more" and "all-done" correctly when she's eating about 90% of the time! (This makes dinner time much more enjoyable than the previous point and whine...)  She almost has "drink" down, but we're not quite there :-)  My smart girl!  We are also working on these in Portuguese.

* She can now understand and follow simple commands - such as "Bring me a book", "Go show Daddy/Hailey", "Get your juice" or "come here" (as well as the obvious "No!" and "Stop" that she hears often ;-)

* She can identify (by pointing or bringing to me): book, duck, ball, daddy, eeyore, hailey, dog, eye, juice/drink (I'm sure there are more, but these are the ones I know that she understands)

* Her favorite toy is still books!  She can look at books for hours (ok well maybe minutes, but still, a long time!)  Now when I say, "Lara, bring me a book" she'll toddle over to her toy box, pull out a book, bring it over to me and climb up in my lap so I can read it to her!  LOVE it!  :-)  It makes me smile every time!

* She is fascinated by doors and drawers.  She has learned how to NOT squish her fingers this month, which makes both her and I much happier!  We are working on learning which drawers/doors are ok to open and which aren't... this might be a fruitless effort!

* It brings great joy to my day when I open a cabinet/drawer/door and find a random object there (i.e. a tube of toothpaste in my shoe, a piece of tupperware in the bathtub, a toy under the kitchen sink, a piece of cereal in a pot).  It makes me laugh so hard every time!  I have no idea how she gets these objects there.  She is never unsupervised... she must just be sneaky! :-)

* Lara will still eat pretty much anything!  She eats whatever we're eating for breakfast/lunch/dinner with a few snacks in between.

* We are officially done with bottles (yay).  She drinks her milk from a cup at school!

* She mastered the "normal" sippy cup this month.  We had started her on the straw type sippy cup at 6 months (which she loves) but I figured that she needed to understand how to use a regular cup that you have to tip up as well.  

* She LOVES to pet/chase Hailey every chance she gets... Of course, Hailey is not very thrilled about her increasing quickness at getting to her!

* She gives hugs and kisses when asked (and if she's in a good mood) to Mommy, Daddy, Hailey and her stuffed animals (even Hailey's nasty animals... yuck!)  We've been working on blowing kisses.  She has the kiss your hand part down, the blowing part... not so much :-)

* She has learned to "talk" on the phone... and will talk on anything that remotely looks like a phone (Mommy's cell phone, play phone, calculator, book.... stuffed animal...) Cracks me up!  See my previous post about talking on the phone!

* She hates getting her diaper changed/clothes changed and getting put in the car seat (pretty much anything that ties her down and keeps her from being able to run wherever she wants... :-)

* She is missing all of her family!  But December will be the month of family, so she's getting excited! :-)

I'm sure there are more little things that I forgot, but here is what I can remember for now!  I love having this blog to look back on and see how much she's grown and how quickly she is learning/changing!  It is so amazing!