21 months and twinkle eyed

In the last month or so, Uma has taken her babbling to a whole new level. She is definitely smarter than a dog now. No doubt. For a while there it was a toss-up.

Upon waking, she loves to surprise me with her new favorite phrases.
The past few weeks she has woken me with "Uma's a rabbit, Ollyn's a bumble bee" (from Halloween), "Good morning, Kittycats!" and singing "Happy birthday to you.." in her sweet sing-songy voice.

Just in the last couple of weeks she has started speaking in sentences. "Zekey goes home eat dinner, Uma eat dinner, too", "Mama makes coffee, Mama drinks coffee", etc.

She is like a Jewish grandmother when she eats. She wants everyone to eat when she's eating, and if you finish she makes you go get more. I've had to stop gulping down my food so quickly because she shouts at me to keep getting more. "Mama, more!", she'll demand, pointing to the kitchen, waving me to go.

She loves saying making sure everyone is included "Everybody......
"Everybody eat pickles!" "Everybody ice pops!!"

Uma loves singing her little songs. Our little Nina Simone. She can sing "Sunny days, chasing the clouds away...", "I'm a little teapot", "Twinkle twinkle", "Ring around the rosie" , "abcdefg", and her absolute favorite, "Happy birfday to you".
She has the melodies down, and usually the first several words of each.
She still loves her signing time songs (this is a huge understatement).
Her current favorite is "I'm a GIRL! I'm a BOY!" which she changes up at a whim. She doesn't really get who's who but she has tons of fun trying to figure it out.

The other day, she totally floored us when she was banging on her piano and she counted perfectly from one to ten.
After that she threw in a seventeen and a two, but we were amazed all the same.

When Uma is happy, she opens her eyes real wide, puts on a foolish grin, and twinkles her little eyes for dramatics. She couldn't be any cuter.
She is so much fun.

She delights in dancing, and adores spinning rounds and round, squealing "Wheeeeeeee!"
She comes to my dance class with me and will dance now almost the entire time, engaging with other people, jumping up and down, rolling around with strangers, twirling, and doing her famous downward dog.
She loves finding her shadow and dancing with it. "Uma's shadow!"

Shannon is particularly pleased with her new skill of calling people "piggies" after they burp or fart, "Nay Nay piggie!", "Mama piggie!" with a squished nose. It;s especially cute when she burps and smiles and says "Uma piggie"
Shannon is also quite pleased that Uma continues to love poop talk,
"Uma poop, Zekey poop, Mama poop", ""Everybody poop!"

When she feels the urge, she'll yelp "UMA POOP! UMA POOP!" while she has her labor-like contraction. Soon-----the POTTY!!!

Shannon has also taught her how to steal noses, and she just loves eating other peoples noses and will agree to put them back when asked.

She loves writing with a pen, and sometimes we'll just sit together while I'm journalling and she's write for 15 minutes straight. She loves coloring, although she gets mixed up naming colors still. Once I asked her what color something was and she correctly stated "blue" so now everything is blue when asked. Actually, everything is now red when asked. It changes on a dime. It's just the last thing she got positive re-enforcement from saying.

After a lifetime of being told how much she is loved several times a day, she now will say to her dolls, "Uma loves you" and give them a big squeeze and a kiss. Cookie Monster was the first one that got this special treatment.
My twinkle-eyed little mama.