The Laughing Copycat

The time has definitely come to start monitoring our behavior in front of Hannah.  Yeah, yeah, we should have done it from the get go, and we did to some extent, but now we've gotta get serious because she has totally started copying our behaviors.  For instance...

...at the zoo she got ahold of  Eric's cell phone, held it up to her ear, and started talking.

...in her room the other day we were playing with the tea set that my Aunt Pam got for her, and I was showing her how to pour tea, add a spot of cream and a lump of sugar, stir, and sip.  She took her little plastic tea cup in both hands, held it up to her mouth, and tipped her head way back like she was dumping the imaginary tea straight down her gullet (she gets this drinking technique from her father).

...at the library story time yesterday she actually shook the jingle bells and shook them enthusiastically with a big grin on her face.  She's been able to shake them a little for a while, but always seemed kinda perplexed by the concept, but now she gets it, and she likes it.

She also likes to push her stroller back and forth across the first floor but has a hard time maneuvering it and often gets it stuck in the legs of the dining room table chairs.  Unfortunately, her reaction to being stuck is similar to mine--scream out in frustration.  Looks like she inherited my lack of patience...For that reason, when she starts pushing her stroller, I try to replace the stroller with her wheeled push toy that her Grannah got her.  She loves that toy so she's usually pretty happy to make the switch.  When frustrations happen anyway, I respond calmly and ask if she needs help, using the sign for "help." I think she could be quite the diva if indulged and if constantly attended to so I'm trying to wait a minute before jumping in to rescue and also encourage her to ask for what she wants BEFORE freaking out.

I took the below pics a couple of days ago.  At the beginning of the scene, Hannah was on the long couch with me and Eric was on the short couch, but the second he picked up his guitar and started strumming, Hannah slid off the long couch, made her way over to him, climbed up onto his lap, and then climbed in between him and the guitar.  At first she hit the strings like she was trying to teach him how to play it.

But she quickly grew tired of playing guitar teacher and pushed the guitar off his lap so that he could refocus all of his attentions on her. 

And her laugh....My guess is that most parents think their child's laughter is the most gorgeous, bell-tinkling-ly beautiful sound they've ever heard, so I'm not unique in thinking this and have no unique way of writing it either, but seriously, the laugh is awesome.  She laughs at everything now and laughs hard and the harder she laughs the more it makes me want to keep doing whatever I'm doing to make her laugh and since I'm laughing right along with her, my face gets all sore which makes me think that laugher is like push-ups for my cheeks and that that thing that optimists used to say about how smiling exercises something like 200 muscles in your face is probably not bull-honky.  So I'm laughing, and she's laughing, and I'm so addicted to her laugh that I'll do anything for it, including things I used to require alcohol courage for, like dancing.  All those insecurities I used to have about looking stupid while dancing are long gone these days as I flail myself around the room being as silly and dramatic and having as much FUN as possible sometimes in beat to the music, sometimes not, because let's face it, I'm not coordinated, but I don't care anymore how stupid I look, and in fact, the stupider, the better if it'll make her laugh longer and harder.  Some times I feel more liberated now than I did before Hannah. Weird, huh?