I realize it’s been a while since I wrote about all the cute things Savannah is doing these days. She is 17 months old now, and is getting to be so big! When I look at pictures from even a few months ago, I see such a difference. The biggest evidence of time is the length of her hair. It’s getting so long!

I usually leave it down because she is squirmy and doesn’t like me to put it up. Bows don’t stay in very long, so a single ponytail on the top of the head is usually what I do. Sometimes I do pigtails but not often anymore. It’s long enough to tuck behind her ears, and she has learned how to brush it out of her face which is really cute too.

This little girl LOVES music. Her favorite toys are the ones that make music when you press a button. Sometimes she likes to make them all go off at once. :-) She loves to dance and even attempts to sing with the music. She will dance during the singing at church, which I love!

She loves to scoot around the house and rearrange things. I couldn’t find her shoes at one point, and finally looked in a bag in her room. Ah! She put them in there. :-) She also loves containers, and she likes pushing things around. She doesn’t really get into things, but she has discovered the bottom shelf of our kitchen “pantry” – where the pots and pans are kept. We now have a new rule – wash the pots and pans before use. :-) (I don’t have anywhere else to move them, so it’s just easier this way. And she’s entertained.)

She says a few words, but not always consistently. She says “Mommy” and “Daddy” (sometimes it’s “Dada”). I think she understands that we are Mommy and Daddy, but then she’ll go and call other things that so not sure. She says “kitty” (but I don’t hear it very often anymore). Her recent thing is “hi!” and “bye” which are adorable. She loves “shoes” and sounds so cute saying it. She also knows “no” and “yes”, and definitely associates head shaking/nodding with the correct word. I think that’s it. She does talk a lot, but mostly babbling that I can’t understand. I was reading about low muscle tone (which she has) and I read that a lot of times kids with low muscle tone have delayed speech. I thought that was interesting. (She may be right on “schedule” – I honestly don’t know. I decided not to worry about her developmental behavior anymore!)

She LOVES to make animal noises. It started with me teaching her how to act like an elephant. I put my arm up to my nose and made a little noise, pretending I was an elephant. Well, she LOVES that. I will have to get a video! She also knows how to be a monkey and we think she’s a better monkey than any of us! She’ll make monkey noises at random, and it’s so cute. Recently she’s also been obsessed with dogs. She loves to bark (“arf! arf!”) and will bark anytime she sees a dog or a picture of a dog, even if we’re watching TV. My in-laws neighbors have a dog who was in the yard a few times, and after Savannah saw him once she barked every time we walked by their yard, whether the dog was there or not. I am trying to teach her how to meow, but unsuccessfully so far.

I keep saying I need to get a video of her being so cute, because I know these days will pass so quickly.