Train talk and other amazing 11 month 3 week old feats and accomplishments

Sophie recently has started to do the neatest thing. She walks herself over to Jim's new still in the box O-gauge train set that I gave him for Christmas and she stands there and points to the different trains and the logos and words and talks and talks. She is clearly telling us about all the trains and cool things on this great big orange box. It is so fun to watch her go at it!! She really is a very verbal child. Sometimes she talks like she's a politician. She points emphatically or bangs her pointer finger on her highchair tray and talks and talks. Sometimes she taps her fingers on the tray and talks or holds both hands up and talks. It's the best.

Other amazing and wonderful things going on with Sophie these final weeks of her first year of life:
1. Two new teeth have come in on top. This possibly explains A LOT in terms of a) 2am wake-ups b) general fussiness
2. Lately she has started to play with her hair when she's sleepy. Realize of course that this means she has enough hair to play with and that she's old enough to develop such self-soothing habits/quirks.
3. Her hand is all chewed up from her biting it. I give her teethers, bagels, and other things to try and distract her but she loves to bite her own hand best apparently.
4. The cold was relatively short lived. She still has stuffiness but no fever and overall much improved since that first real day of being sick.
5. She walks end to end through the house now without any help and usually without falling down.
6. Did I tell you she climbed TWO stairs the other day? Oh, I did already, huh?

Oh, there's so much more I'm forgetting I'm sure. I can't believe she is going to be 1 year old soon... Mere days in fact. You can expect me to say this a lot on the blog in the next week or two.