More updates on what Lexi is doing these days

Updates on Lexi’s development:

• She is getting better at greeting people and saying good-bye. More and more now, she is saying hi when she sees people she knows. But it is done in a funny way and sometimes at funny times. She says it like it’s a question, lifting up her voice at the end: “Hi?” She’ll say it to one of us when we enter her room in the morning or when she sees one of us downstairs in the living room and she’s upstairs in the open area over the living room looking through the railing. And she’s slowly learning to wave bye-bye, but only when prompted, mostly when she hears the word “kwaheri” (“see you later” in KiSwahili). She also somehow learned that “hi” is what you say when you answer the phone. We don’t even have a traditional telephone – what you would use for a land line (with a receiver and a base) – at home. So it came as a surprise a few weeks ago when we had to spend the night in a hotel in downtown Nairobi when our flight to Johannesburg was cancelled that Lexi said “hi” when picking up a phone. We were in the hotel room, and she was crawling around everywhere, playing with everything, including the phone (again, not a cell phone, which is mostly what she has seen us use). It hadn’t rung, but she picked it up and said “hi” in a very high pitch. Every time we pretended to pick up a call on the phone and hold it to her ear, she did this, even at other hotels we were staying at in South Africa. Perhaps Jane has taught her this when they were playing together.
• She is continuing to speak in what sounds like formed phrases and sentences but in her baby babble language. But lately she has added strange facial expressions to her speech. It’s mostly a furrowed brow, so she looks at us with a frown or scowl on her face when we really know she’s not unhappy or mad. It’s just funny to see her try out new facial expressions and not really be aware of what they’re conveying.
• Her two bottom teeth are clearly in, and so are her two top teeth, although not fully. When she smiles, it’s now a different smile. I already miss her old, gummy smile and how goofy she looked like that (and didn’t even know it). Ah, she’s growing up too fast!