My little girl's growing up

Emma's not just a baby who sits in her swing anymore. She's not the crawler learning to stand. She's not just a toddler speaking her first words. Emma is turning into her very own person. She's creating a personality. She's speaking sentences and even paragraphs. She's learning faster than I can teach her. Her imagination is running wild. She's creating make believe games that I didn't remember playing until I was much older.

They say you love every stage your child is in. And that is true. I thought it was the neatest thing when Emma rolled over, stood up for the first time, and started saying "Daddy". But those are small feats compared to the skills she's pulling off these days.

I love Emma's speech right now. She says everything backwards. The end of the sentence comes first. So you have to really listen. The other day she went off on a run-on sentence about her nap. We were on our way to walmart and she must have been tired because she started going off about naps and mommy reading her a book. It was so neat to listen to her first real "paragraph".

Yesterday, Jason and I said, "Get your shoes, we're going bye-bye." So, she got her shoes and sat down on the kitchen floor where we were standing and she said, "Walmart?" Jason and I just looked at each other amazed. We've never mentioned Walmart to her specifically before. We've always said we were going to the store or just going shopping. But, she picked up that Walmart was not only a name she hears often (because we go almost every day) but also that it was the store we shopped at and not just another word. I was just so amazed. In a year I'll look back and think this is a small feat. But today, it's amazing and I'm so proud of how my little girl is growing up. I feel like I should be teaching her algebra for fear if I don't her genius mind will go to waste. Maybe after she learns her numbers I'll get right on that.