Entertaining Herself... 16 Month Old BabyToddler, Part 1

These days, it is more about Cora entertaining herself than about me entertaining her. A dish towel can keep her busy for hours.

Here are some of the activities that have been keeping Cora occupied recently:

• Opening and closing things. Doors, cabinets, everything! Ever since she has been able to crawl she has been trying her hardest to get the fridge or the freezer open. Once she was holding a wooden spoon and she wedged into into the door and it popped open. She was extremely proud of herself!

• Coloring. Cora's love for coloring grew quickly. We tried it one week and she couldn't have cared less. The next week, that babytoddler of mine says "blue" (which is her word for "give me those crayons, lady") at least 50 times a day.

• Dish Towel. Like I said earlier, Cora is wild for dish towels or for any small piece of fabric she can get her hands on. She will use them as blankets for her stuffed animals. She will play the "how flat can I get this to lay" game. Dish towels can be hats. The possibilities are endless.

• Trying to put things around her neck usually by holding her chin to her chest to get them to stay. This one she does with dish towels, ribbons, spoons, pretty much anything. She loves to check to see if she can turn her chin into a third arm. Spoiler alert: she can!

• Animal sounds and activities. Her favorite is to stick her tongue in and out quickly when I ask what a lizard does. She knows the basic ones pretty well so we moved on to some of the less known animal sounds. What does a llama say? Well according to what I taught Cora, a llama opens its mouth really wide and does a guttural "ama" sound. I'm not really sure how that happened. Cora is still convinced that dogs only pant rather than bark. My sister and I taught her to say "addle addle" (meaning waddle waddle) when she talks about penguins.

• As always, the library and the park. She could entertain herself for hours at either of these places. Don't worry- I don't let her entertain herself alone there.

• Sweeping. Cora regularly gets out the broom and waves it around the kitchen. For Christmas, she got a Cora-sized broom that she is pretty into.

• Reading books. There are books ALL OVER our house and Cora is constantly going through them. Sometimes she likes to read them up-side-down. But, only every once in a while.

In this photo she was still in the eat books rather than read books phase.

• Spinning around. Cora figured out that spinning around in a circle was pretty fun right around her 15 month birthday. She loves it! She spins around or, more accurately put, walks around in a fairly tight circle. Then, as you would expect, the dizzies set in and she starts her wobbling and squatting down to avoid the impeding nose dive.

See that dizzy look in her eyes? She is on about spin number 6.

• Spinning the chair around. As much as Cora loves spinning herself around she loves spinning our swivel chair around just as much. Her favorite is to put a couple of her stuffed animals in there and let them go for a ride.

• Cuddles! ahhhh I never thought I would see the day. But it has finally come! For the last week and a half she has given me some serious cuddles for the 5 minutes before I put her in bed at night. I always say, "I love you SOOOO much." Then she will name everyone she knows (including Santa and dogs) and I will tell her that they love her too. It is the sweetest moment ever.  And I know this isn't exactly entertaining herself. But I do occasionally catch her cuddling some of her stuffed animals.
  
  
  
  Cora was only 2 months old in this photo and this was one of the last times that she cuddled me excluding when she would wake up in the middle of the night.
  
  
  
  
  I will be back in a week or so with another riveting post about the other ways that Cora entertains herself!