Miriam, you have had a very busy and exciting eleventh month! You have acquired many new skills and your sense of humor is really shining 🙂

You learned to wave ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ this month. Unless you are distracted by the situation, you will wave pretty much every time. You can roll a ball back and forth with someone and are beginning to follow directions such as ‘look’ or ‘watch’ or ‘put the duck in the tub’. You’ve made SO many connections; it is true what pediatricians report: your vocabulary is much larger than the words you can say! You’ve started to communicate more than just one word at a time. You’ll look at Mommy or Daddy and say several “words” in a row, like you really want to tell us a whole sentence/concept. What fun!

Blocks have taken on a new meaning too – you try to stack them as well as knock them down, although destroying is still much more fun. You learned to clap just this last weekend – it’s pretty cute: you hold your left hand still and clap your right hand to it 🙂 You and sister Aubry have been working on using a straw and you’ve learned to not only blow bubbles in the water but to also drink the water. Big girl!

Your strongest concept at this point is dogs. Anytime you see or hear a dog – not just our dog – you say ‘woof’. You’ve added the ‘f’, ‘h’, and ‘s’ sound to your abilities this month as well as more tongue-clicking. One of the funniest discoveries you’ve made is how to fake laugh and cough. You’ll be eating dinner and suddenly break into a fake laugh. It’s hilarious! Mommy thinks you inherited Daddy’s quick wit. #love

Your new favorite book is “Toot Toot Beep Beep” by Emma Garcia. You love to make the car sounds, specifically the ‘honk honk’ of the yellow taxi and the ‘brmm brmm’ of the tiny purple car. You’re pretty much an expert at giving kisses now. They’re still open-mouthed and more of a lick but they are super-sweet. You love giving hugs as well and are generous with them! We love your sweet side so much, Miriam 🙂

Mommy has been working with you on identifying body parts and you’re getting pretty good at it. You can find a mouth, nose, eyes, hair, and ears about 50% of the time. Each night after your bath, you use your hairbrush semi-correctly on what could be the begininngs of some curly hair 😉

Mother’s Day was so special with you this year! Grandma Pam came to celebrate with us and Daddy took us out for a delicious meal at Trezo Mare. Your gift to us that day was sleeping during lunch, as well as a gorgeous piece of artwork from you and Daddy 🙂

You had your fourth plane ride this month. We visited Steamboat Springs, CO over Memorial Day weekend; Pop-pop invited our family and Aunt Tricia’s family up for the weekend. We had a great time relaxing and laughing and making memories 🙂

Interestingly, your current favorite activity is playing with laundry. While you don’t discriminate well between clean and dirty laundry *yikes*, you absolutely love to take it in and out of the laundry basket. Here is a pretty cute video of how happy laundry makes you these days:

Miriam Elayne, Mommy cannot believe it is already time to plan your first birthday celebration! Words can’t describe how much joy you have brought our family in just 11 short months. We can’t wait to see what your energy, joy, and love will continue to bring to not just us, but the world. You are our beloved sunshine!

Love,

Mommy