17 Months Old

Rebekah Karunya

Rebekah with a friend at church

Rebekah has been working hard at growing up this past month. In some ways it is hard to believe that she is already nearly a year and a half old, but in other ways it seems like she is older. While Daddy and Grandad were in Thailand this past month, we stayed with Grandma. Rebekah had a blast that week. I think her favorite things were helping Grandma sweep up the leaves in the carport outside, and helping water the plants. Of course, she ended up with more water on herself than on the plants, but she sure had a good time!Grandma bought a ball to keep at her house so Rebekah will have it to play with whenever she is there. That was one of her favorite toys while we were there, and she learned how to throw and kick a ball (forward, that is) that week.Rebekah loves food. In the photo below, you can see her trying hard to pull her high chair up to the table for breakfast. She had already convinced Daddy to put her bib on her. When I ask her to go get Daddy for a meal, she will run over to Nathan and pucker up her lips like she wants a kiss. When Nathan offers her a kiss, she will giggle, jump away, and say "eat!" All we can figure is that she's just trying to get his attention so she can tell him that it's time to eat. =)
Rebekah is still working hard at her language development. She's starting to use more words that have two or three syllables, and seems to try to copy nearly EVERYthing we say to her. A few of her latest words are:
uncle, auntie, Mommy, Daddy (as opposed to Mama and Dada), grapes, story, snack, doggie, open, monkey, night-night, baby, bed, more, Bekah, me, bag, read, water, dance, spoon, bowl, trash, dirty, door, morning (as in "good morning").

Lately she has been "labeling" everything. She will go around the house and point to something saying who it belongs to. This seems to be very important to her, because she knows that the things that don't belong to her (such as Daddy's camera or Mommy's book) are off limits. She'll go over to the shoe rack, point to Nathan's shoes and say "Daddy's?" I'll say, "Yes, those are Daddy's shoes." It almost seems like a game to her.

Rebekah can't quite feed herself yet, but she is getting good at spearing things with a fork and getting them to her mouth from there. She also seems to be going through a growth spurt at the moment, because this morning she downed FIVE pancakes! Granted, they were small, but normally she doesn't eat more than two, if that.
She has also mastered stairs. Since we have to go up a flight of stairs to get to our house, Rebekah has had lots of practice going up and down stairs. Just the other day I saw her very carefully walking down two stairs at church by herself without holding onto anything! I am afraid that she might be getting a little too brave in that area, although it is nice to know that she can do it if she has to.
She is quite the little ham, as you can see from these photos. Please continue to keep both us and Rebekah in your prayers as we seek to raise her in a manner pleasing to the Lord.