Cordelia at Seventeen Months

Cordelia is almost seventeen months old, and she's a little bundle of fun. She's learning lots of new words; she's at that age where she learns new words every day, and loves to imitate. Today it was "snowsuit". She started off with "nosnos" and by the end of the day pretty much had it down perfectly.

Lately her favourite word is "here", pronounced "heee-yer"; it started off as the word she uses when she gives you something, but now she mostly uses it when she wants something, accompanied by urgent gesticulation.

She comes to me when I am on the computer, with a dolly and a hat, and says "Hat! Hat! Hat!" until I put the hat (usually far too large) on the dolly. When we're on the floor, and I'm sitting cross-legged, she turns around and reverses onto my lap from about a foot away. She loves to be read to: "Book! Book!" is another of her favourite utterances.

She calls both cats "Mimi", and in fact she calls all four-legged mammals Mimi, as far as I can tell.

She bring boots: if we're going out (or if she would like us to go out) she goes to the front hall and finds my boots and brings them to me, one at a time. "Boot! Out?" She loves to go out; the other day we went out and I shovelled snow while she played in it. Because she was trapped in a snowsuit with thumbless mittens there wasn't much she could do, but she climbed up and down our step, and sat down hard in the snow, "plunk", then laughed and got up again. She finds her own fun.

When she goes downstairs she goes backwards, and she's very conservative about it: she likes to turn around and start crawling backwards a good two feel away from the top of the stairs.

Cordelia is very demonstrative; several times a day she comes up to me, unbidden, and hugs me around the knees. She loves to give kisses and hugs around the neck, too. She laughs a lot, and if she falls you can often get her to laugh instead of cry.

She still sleeps really well, from around six-thirty until around six am. She has taken, recently, to waking up and crying around ten or ten-thirty, but Blake loves it because he can go in and have a cuddle with her before putting her down again. I suppose that's a bad habit to encourage, but I doubt she will keep it up forever. And honestly, if she's fifteen and she still wants a few minutes of attention from her parents at ten-thirty at night I will count myself lucky.

She's still nursing, in the morning and before her nap and at bedtime, and sometimes during the day if she's hurt herself and needs comfort. It's lovely. She also more or less feeds herself at table; we bought a cheap Canadian knockoff of the overpriced Tripp-Trapp chair for each girl and Cordelia loves to be at table instead of behind everyone in the high chair. She makes a colossal mess but she has a nice time.

She's good company; she is easy-going and quick to laugh and to learn. I can leave her to her own devices during the day and she'll play by herself for ages. She plays with dollies, she climbs onto things, she pulls stuff out of boxes at an astonishing rate. She plays nicely with Delphine too, or I should say Delphine plays nicely with her. They are so different and so delightful; I could not have picked out better children from a Children Catalogue.