STELLA SKILLS

Stella does so many adorable things and I try to document most of them. Lately, she has two new skills that are totally amazing me.

First off, she is all about feeding herself with utensils. I think I first noticed this when we were at a restaurant and she was making whining sounds while reaching out for something. I realized that what she wanted was a fork. Suddenly, the simple task of using her fingers was not sufficient and she wanted to use her fork. With her skills of obtaining food with the fork being about as good as mine are with chopsticks (i.e. not good) it made it a lot harder for me to eat my food because I was constantly being interrupted with Stella's pathetic whines for help getting food on her fork. She is getting better fast though, and today when I took these pictures I didn't help her once getting the banana bread on her fork.

Stella's next act of genius seems more advanced, and that is how she holds a pen or pencil in the correct way. No one ever tried to teach her this. She just started picking up pens and then paper and then she would pretend to write on the paper while holding her pen just like her mom. It was my mom that started helping her write letters on paper, and now when she wants to do it, she brings me the necessary tools and says "A B," referring of course to her ABCs. I keep trying to remind her that we only draw on paper and not anything else. Do you think she is listening?

Some words that Stella is saying now are:

• Apple
• Shoes
• Juice (which sounds the same as shoes)
• Milk (which means she wants juice)
• Cold
• Mmmm Good.
• Cookie (referring to an actual cookie, and also that she is a "smart" cookie)
  
• Mote (referring to the TV remote--I don't know how proud I should be of this one.)