Comprehension

Laurel is now 10.5 months old (I know!) and well into the phase of letting us know her likes and dislikes.

She is VERY good at this. A bit too good.

For one thing, she now understands "NO", which usually generates one of two responses:

But I WANTED to throw my food on the floor!

or

This is what I think of THAT idea (look close, that is a raspberry)

In other words, I think we're in trouble. The crying happens when she has no control over the situation (in this case, we took away the food she was throwing on the floor). The non-crying raspberry/grin-of-evilness is the more usual response. She'll actually get up to the gate, give it a little shake to get our attention, and then really shake it while laughing at us.

Bwah ha ha ha! Look what I'm doing!

All in all, its kind of new territory. Ben was BUSY. Insanely busy. We used to joke about how we could hire him out to check out other people's babyproofing. If we stopped him from doing one thing, he'd just move on to another (and another and another). Laurel, to put it mildly, is more persistent.

So, yeah, looking forward to her adolescence.