Grapes and books and words

Eden turned 14 months yesterday, and we're behind on panda pics.  We will get you our 13 and 14 month pictures soon!  Most of the recent Eden pics are on Daddy's camera, so here's one from a couple of weeks ago, in a Trader Joe's shopping cart.

You can sort of see my two teeny teeth that finally came in!

Lately we have a picky eater on our hands--Eden is extremely particular and lately her favorite food seems to be grapes.  She will eat as many grapes as you will let her have.  We have been giving her grapes for dessert and trying to get her to eat her real dinner first, but she's wise to our tricks.   She will usually eat just a couple of bites of the main course, refuse to eat any more, then we give her carrots, she'll take a few bites, refuse to eat any more, then we'll give her grapes and she'll eat them ravenously and ask for more and more and more.

She also likes complex carbohydrates and will reliably eat Cheerios and bread products.  She especially loves challah, which she can even say (sounds like ha-ya).  This is a problem because our usual method of getting her to eat her least favorite food first when she's hungriest doesn't work on Shabbat - we do the motzi, she gets challah, and then she won't eat anything else.

Eden loves books, particularly pointing to things in books.  We try to read to her but often she'll skip the pages so she can look at and point to something else.  She can find many things you ask her to find.  Lately she is fond of pictures of ducks and pigs.  Eden is learning more and more animal sounds - her latest is an elephant (to add to her repertoire of monkey, dog, lion, and owl).  She loves pictures of animals and is great at recognizing them.  Her current favorites are the Sandra Boynton books, Noisy Peek-a-boo, Playtime Hide and Seek, and My First Words board book.  She loves to look at the back cover of the book where they advertise other books.  She is a bit sick of Pat the Bunny, Eric's Bedtime at the Nut House, and some others.

She loves her touch and feel books too - one book has a little picture of stuffed animals that appears a total of four times (front cover, on a page, back cover, and spine) and she loves flipping to it as fast as she can and pointing to the duck circled here:

Another book has this picture in it, which always makes her laugh!

Our Eden is turning into a curious, spirited, passionate, mischievous, delightful child and we are loving this phase.