Natasha is now thirteen months old and I am beginning to really love this stage. She's like a walking sponge - absorbing everything she sees, hears, and experiences, and a little monkey - after absorbing it all, she tries to copy and imitate everything to as much of an extent as it is possible for her.
For example, we allow her to watch Baby TV on Rogers on Demand every day, which consists of different educational programs for babies. Her favourite part is Baby Songs which is a collection on nursery rhymes and other colourful baby songs with friendly characters. Natasha absolutely loves this program and we can feed her anything when she watches it! But it is really interesting to watch the elements she pulls out of these cartoons and how she tries to copy them. Her most recent one is blowing air kisses. No one in our family taught her to blow air kisses and yet she constantly does it, which I know she learned from a little girl who blows an air kiss at one of the cartoons. She also sings along and dances whenever these cartoons come along. She's a very musically inclined baby.
Other new things she's recently learned to do is make barking noises when she sees a dog outside (and sometimes a squirrel - I don't think she can clearly distinguish between dogs and squirrels yet! My mom taught her this); she can point to herself when I ask her "where is Natasha?" (I taught her that one); she also grabs her head whenever she deliberately drops something to the floor and it's absolutely hilarious (I taught her that one, too!).
I am getting a lot of fun out of teaching her new things, but inspite all this, Natasha is still 100% a daddy's girl. Whenever Matthew leaves for work in the morning, she sits on the living room floor with the saddest look on her face; it's a little depressing. And whenever around 6:00 PM she hears the keys in the door, she crawls as fast as possible towards the front door, so that I have to yell "careful, careful!" to Matthew so he doesn't knock the door on her head. Generally, her Papa means "playtime" and "fun" and "going crazy", while Mama means "bedtime", and "food", and "washing bum after dirty diaper", but also "snuggle time".
