A day of Firsts

Kyle has been extremely busy with work. He got his Realtor's license back in December and has been selling homes for Edge, which is a company that builds new homes. Like everything new that Kyle takes on, he seems to be a natural. He is putting in long hours, but his hard work is paying off. I would be lying if I said I didn't want to throw his phone in our garbage disposal sometimes, but for the most part I'm proud of his success and happy that he has found something he enjoys doing. He had been working 6 days a week in order to keep up on all of his emails and calls, but recently decided to take Tuesdays off. His phone still rings off the hook, but Bentlee and I get to have him around all day which we both love. This last Tuesday we decided to go to an indoor Aquatics Center in Lehi. Bentlee loves taking baths so we thought for sure she would have a blast in a giant bathtub full of little kidlets. Well, we were wrong- I guess it was slightly overwhelming. She made a pouty face the second we set her in the water, and she clung tightly to us the whole time. Whenever she got splashed in the face she started crying. (Did I mention it was Spring Break and there were kids everywhere?) At first she wouldn't let us put her in the yellow buckets, but she slowly....SLOWLY warmed up to them. And at one point we were tossing her back and forth which she loved. I'm hoping next time we go to a pool she will be more relaxed, because I plan to have LOTS of pool days this summer!

Since we didn't stay long at the pool, we took her to a playground where she went swinging for the first time. Again, we didn't the reaction we expected, but she didn't hate it either. She was just more interested in the kids playing around us.

You asked for it...

This is a random video I took yesterday of her looking through a Target baby ad we got in the mail. She had been signing "baby" so I grabbed my phone to record, which of course meant that she stopped. But I got her jabbering which is just as cute. She talks like this all day long and I wish I knew what she was trying to tell us!

This is her half-hearted "please"

Sign Language, Mimis and Dancing

So much has changed in just a few weeks that I had to jot it down before I forget. Bentlee finally seems to be grasping sign language. The main one we've worked on is "more" and she usually just claps, which took months for her to catch on. But "please" she picked up within seconds. She doesn't do it very often, and we usually have to ask her to say it. But it is oh-so-cute when she does! She copies several other signs when she watches her signing movies. This is her signing "baby"...

The words she says on her own are mama, dada, "dee" for dog and "kee" for kitty, uh-oh, and my personal favorite, "mimi" for binki. I love it because she came up with it all on her own. She's actually been saying it for months, but we just figured out last week what it meant. It's so obvious to us now-when we're in the car and she drops it, she whines "mimi" over and over until we pull over and find it for her. And when it falls out of her crib, same story. She's not extremely attached to her binki but she always needs it to fall asleep and she likes it in the car, especially when she's tired. I also love that she named it her "mimi" because my niece Gracie calls it the same thing. So cute!

She's getting really good at mimicking us-from small things like putting lotion on our hands, to folding our arms when we pray. I first noticed that last Sunday when she copied the family sitting behind us. She's done it a few times since, and then this morning Kyle knelt down next to her in the living room where we always say a family prayer together. She knew right away what that meant and had her little arms folded and head bowed before he even did. We've never taught her to do that, it's always been on her own. I hope that she's always so willing to pray with us!

She's walking along furniture like a pro, and she's pushing her walkers. She still tries to climb stairs every chance she can get, but 95% of the time there's a gate in her way.

I love the way she bobs her head and/or dances whenever music comes on. Yesterday in the car it was especially cute because she happened to be drinking a bottle.

I love watching her personality develop. She definitely has a goofy side to her. A few days ago she randomly made up a game all on her own (that probably came from when I did this with a sock a couple months ago) where she puts her binki on her head and lets it fall off. She laughs so hard at herself and it's the cutest thing! I tried getting it on video the other day but she was kind of over it at that point.

More to come soon!