Cute toddler picture of the month

I took advantage of being retired to fly out to Portland for one day of babysitting. Lena is just a month away from her 2nd birthday, and is more adorable than ever. She is finally saying "Gamma" and "Gampa" and is capable of constructing short but pithy 3-word sentences. She has trouble getting out more than 3 syllables at a time, but still manages to experiment with many new parts of speech: pronouns, adjectives, interjections, indefinite articles. A lot of her "sentences" are really just a noun, but usually introduced with "A" or "Oh", as in  "A Bus!" or "Oh, PlayDoh!" She rather suddenly learned colors since the last time I saw her (which was only 2 months ago) and is starting to use words like "Happy" and "Sad."  When she sees a picture of a Mommy, Daddy, and small child she says "Happy."  Awww.

Didn't take a lot of pics since she had a cold and wasn't as photogenic as usual, but here's a cute one where her nose isn't running. She was actually a little grumpy until I said, "I'm taking your picture" and got this. This kid is a natural model.

This just in: word buffer expands from 3 to 5

In my last post (earlier this evening) I reported that granddaughter Lena was now speaking in sentences, but seemingly constrained by the inability to say more than 3 syllables at a time. She was clearly TRYING to say longer phrases, but would drop words out of the middle. For instance, she would try to say "I'll be right back" (sometimes, adorably, to one of her toys) but it would come out as "I'll right back."

"No more monkeys (jumping on the bed)" turned into "No....mon-keys" with an awkward pause in the middle, sometimes followed by an attempt at the second part of the line. I remember this buffering problem from when my own children were learning to talk. When Thorin first started repeating words, he could reproduce just the last syllable he had heard: "Daddy" became "Dee."  Then one day he could suddenly repeat 2 syllables, and "Dee" became just a fond memory.

Anyway, Amber just texted that Lena had suddenly started saying longer sentences, starting with the surprising declaration, "I am a robot."  A little later she said, "Gamma come visit me," a sentence noteworthy not only for the increased length and grammar but for the combination of remembering the recent past and projecting it into the future. And, of course, heartwarming. I miss you too, little Lena.