What the Little Girl's Been Up To

At 15 months, Miya is now in the stage where she can mimic everything we tell her to do. And she’s getting louder too with shouting bouts to boot.

Here are the things she’s been doing. The list may sound like I'm gushing about my daughter. She just really amazes me everyday. She's this tiny human being who was just a baby and now can really do so many things already.

1. Last week she suddenly decided she loves her books. Before, even if I read to her she wouldn’t be bothered with her books. But one night last week she pointed on the pile of books beside our bed and we went through them one by one. We have small books titled Little Elephant and The Littlest Turtle (both four pages each) which are more age appropriate for her because her attention span is so short. She also loves going through her book The Silly Emperor’s New Clothes. This is sort of a pop-up book where you open parts of the book where the emperor is revealed or the letters of the tricksters, that sort of thing. Before, she would destroy this kind of books, tug the pop-up parts. But now, she knows how to open those parts and well, she still tugs at them but she’s more “careful” now. The book is still whole albeit with a few creases on the pages. Her book “Love you Forever” is one of the shortest reads we have. We never get through the end of this book. The other night I think we went through the fourth page where the boy is already in his teens. She always do the “Lagot Ka” with her hand when we go through this book because of the cover. She knows the baby is in trouble because of all those kalat.  I don’t know why but we went further in reading The Velveteen Rabbit. Although of course for this book and same with the Emperor’s New Clothes and Love you Forever, we don’t really read the whole text to her. We just make up our own narration. For the Velveteen rabbit, last night, I’ve read to her until that time when the toy rabbit was left in the woods and was found by real rabbits until the boy went back for it. For Guess How Much I Love You, we only reach until the page where Big Nut Brown Hare answers Little Nut Brown Hare with I love you this much with his hands raised up above his head. So because of Miya’s sudden interest in books, Joema and I bought her new ones but only similar to her small books. Joema said because these are more appropriate for her with her short attention span. (I wonder if she has ADHD…hmm..I don’t want to be paranoid!) We bought a few books in national bookstore the other day for less than P300. The books were more or less around P50 each. But we did not show everything to Miya all at once. We only took out one of the books for her the one with “The First Words”. She points to the balloon and she says “Boo.”
2. She’s so interested in lizards or butiki or “Tiki” how she calls it. She points up to our ceiling and my husband brings her near our ceiling. See, we have low celing so when my husband stands on the bed she can bring Miya up over his head and she’s arelady near the ceiling. Right after we go upstairs to get ready to sleep she points upward and says “Tiki”. This morning when she woke up the first word she said “Tiki” with matching encouraging smile to her father. That’s my husband’s cue to bring her up to the ceiling haha!
3. Her newest trick is when we say “talino ‘to!” she points to her forehead. Feel na feel nya as if she really understands. Aside from this she has her "good girl" and "busog tiyan" gestures.
4. She likes to scream and yell when she wants something. Good thing I read about it in Babycenter that this is common for her age. I was so worried she’s becoming a brat!
5. She likes to sing, too! You can sing a phrase of a song to her and she can mimic the tune even if she can't speak the words properly. We discovered this on her last Gymboree class where the themes was Divas. One of the songs is Shanaia Twain's Feels Like a Woman where the baby will sing along with the teacher everytime Shanaia sings the part "Uh-Oh, Oh-oh". And she can sing along! Her teacher was so amazed with her. My mother taught her a song where the they sing the phrase "Kukurukuku Paloma." I wish I have it on video but she's so hard to record now, she doesn't want to be recorded. She's like a celebrity and I'm the paparazzi!
6. Speaking of Gymboree she well remembers the hello song from there. It goes like this "Sing, sing, sing hello. Sing hello to . Sing sing sing hello. Sing hello to ." I sing this to entertain her during long car rides. After each phrase, she says "Hi!"
7. She can also say "Bye!"
8. She has forgotten to say "Mama" and calls me by gesturing like she's calling a dog and then says "tsk, tsk" like when you call a lizard. That or "Dididi" for dede hahaha!
9. She calls her Daddy "A-di" which very well might be the same as "a-te" for her yaya.
10. She can identify each one of us including herself. When we ask her "nasan si Miya?" she will point to herself and everybody we ask about even her lolos and lolas. What amazes me is she knows she has two sets of grandparents. We tried this because when my MIL was staying with us, she taught her this, Miya knows to point to her when asked where is Lola. But then when my parents are with us and Miya's asked where Lola is, she will point to my mother. 
11. My parents taught her the McDo sign, where you put your hands on top of your head to form an M. But with her she just puts both hands on her head without forming the M. That's her McDo. What's amazing is when we were watching TV and she saw the McFloat commercial of Xian Lim, she did the McDo sign. I'm amazed because she was able to associate the McDo sign with the commercial. My parents taught her how to do McDo without referring to a TV commercial. What's more amazing is, after several times of seeing the commercial on TV (we were watching American Idol where the TVC was shown several times during commercial breaks), she does the McDo sign just upon seeing Xian Lim's face. And when you have the time seach the TVC on youtube, the commerical starts with showing only the upper portion of Xian's face and then goes down to a McDo float. Miya does the McDo sign right when she sees Xian's face and not after the McDo float. Isn't that amazing?
12. She loves pizza and pasta. When her Daddy brings home a big box a pizza she lets out her big smiel and says "It-za!" She can finish off one slice of pizza in one seating. And can finish a small plateful of spaghetti. But on separate occasions. 
13. She knows how to say opo but pronounces it "po-poh" which is so cute! Even if she doesn't understand why she's saying opo sometimes hehe. 
14. She has learned to tickle us in our armpits - I taught her this haha! Everytime she sess our armpits she tickles us with matching "Yiiii!" from her.
15. When asked "Sinong maganda/mabait/mabaho poopoo, taas kamay!" she raises her hands and gives out a "Yiiii!" too as if getting kilig haha!
16. Her father taught her how to laugh like a bad girl with garalgal voice and all hahaha! I'm sure you can't imagine it, but just for record keeping I'm listing that down here. And then sometimes she laughs and then puts her hand on her mouth, like a mahiyain laugh. Different ends of the spectrum this little girl.
17. She's so cute when she does her beautiful eyes because she just crinkles her nose and her eyes looks like little slits on her face. I'm not sure if I blogged about that here or in my other blog. She does the same face when I tell her to close her eyes when she needs to go to sleep already. I think she's kabisote and her cue word is "eyes."
18. Another proof that she's kabisote is this. When we ask her "Pano magpatay ng lamo?" she claps both her hands as one does when you kill a mosquito. She sometimes does this and says "Uhm!" to emphasize the "killing". And then when asked where's the mosquito she points to her open palm even if no mosquito there. So anyway, one time we were riding the car and then we passed by this street where for days there was a wake, I blurted out to my husband "Honey, wala nung patay noh?", Miya suddenly clapped her hand and said "Uhm!" hahaha! Obviously her cue word is "patay."
19. One time my parents were at home with us and my father suddenly farted. Then we taught her "Pano utot ni Lolo?" then she does a cute fart sound like "pooot" hahaha. Then if we ask her if it's mabaho she does her baho face hahahaha!
20.  She very recently discovered how to use the headset. She's so cute when she tried using it the first time because she's really swaying to the music. Actually I think she really likes music as evidenced by #5 above. Her latest favorite song is Somebody by Gotye. One time I was nursing her, when she heard the song being played on TV, she finished nursing and sat right up and watched the video and started swaying to the song. 

Day 2 of 30 (x2)