No, Please.

Watching the progression of Lilly's language skills has been one amazement after another.  Jim and I are not too well educated in what milestones Lilly should be reaching and when, which is completely fine with us.  What we do know is that when all of her babble turns into words, which it is quickly doing, we are going to be in a lot trouble, and what little bit of silence is left in our lives will be gone...forever.  Lilly learned how to say "no" when she was in DC at the beginning of September and Tess was trying to eat her food.

For a good month, no was her favorite word.  Lilly soon discovered that saying no often did not get her what she wanted.  Saying please got her things.  So, she combined these and "no please" or "noooo peeeeease" became Lilly's way of saying yes!  And it worked.  No, please progressed to "yesh" so our toddler can officially tell us what she does and doesn't want.  And boy does she tell us!

I wish I knew how Lilly's little brain worked.  When our computer's screensaver goes on, all the pictures from iPhoto come up in a slideshow.  We can sit for ages watching that slideshow, and often, you'll find one of us stopped by the computer watching pictures pop up from college, rowing, our wedding, all the Ironmans, Thanksgivings, family vacations in Bali and camping in Australia, and of course, pictures of Lilly from the past 19 months...you name it, they come up.  Well, we always tell Lilly who is in the pictures since she's learning how to say everyone's name.  In looking at these pictures, Lilly has decided that she associates any pictures of someone on a bike with her Grandpa, or as she says, "Papa."  It's very cute to hear this little voice from by the computer saying, "Papa, papa" over and over again when she sees someone riding a bike.  When I heard her doing this the other day, I walked over to see what the picture was, and it was in fact Jerry, racing Ironman Coeur d'Alene!  I had a good laugh, called Jim who laughed, and informed Dad and Jerry, both of whom got a kick out of it for different reasons, I'm sure.

Lilly says "hi" and "bye bye" to everything and everyone.  She greets her stuffed animals, her toys, even the traffic lights when we're in the car.  We've said to her that green means go, so after a light turns green and we drive away, she says, "bye bye go."  Lilly also likes to tell us when she wants to do something again, or as she says, "nan, nan..." until we play another song or read the book again...or until Jim throws her onto the bed or up in the air...or when we tickle her.  She says it all the time.  Yesterday afternoon we went to church, where we are trying to teach Lilly to sit quietly and in a confined space for an hour.  Let's just say that church isn't as relaxing as it used to be.  Anyway, when the priest (who read his homily from an iPad, by the way...) held up the bread and wine and an alter server rang the bells, Lilly loved it.  She loved it so much that in the dead silent church, she started saying, "again, again, again...." until we distracted her with a piece of apple.  Lilly has no sense of volume yet, although she is much quieter in church now than she was even a month ago.  And she loves shaking hands and saying "peash" or as we like to say, "peace."  Lilly says "peace" to us at home now; she alternates between that and giving high fives.  Life is never boring with a little one and every day, we are amazed by something new.