Monster Kisses

Sometimes I'm surprised by how much my daughter notices, particularly when I think about how she's only 6 months old.  She knows favorite songs and gets more excited when we sing some than others.  She likes specific toys.  She recognizes people when she sees them.  The other day I went to pick her up after work and my husband wasn't with me like he usually is, and she spent a good amount of time looking behind me and all around the room and it took a minute before I realized she was looking for him.

But the cutest thing happened the other night when I was reading to her.  Required back story here is that we've been reading to her since she was probably a week or two old.  It seemed to calm her down, and she seemed to like looking at the pictures.  We've gone through a good deal of her book collection over the past few months.  I'm a book person myself, and I like book quotes.  When we were reading Where the Wild Things Are, I did all of the things the Wild Things said in a monster voice.  Then, at bath time I got in the habit of using the monster voice while I was drying her off.  She has a variety of bath towels and they all have hoods that look like animal heads, so as I dried her hair and the animal head looked like it was eating her face, I'd say "Oh, please don't go, I'll eat you up I love you so!" in monster voice and then I'd cover her face with kisses.  Over time she started to think it was really funny and she'd get a huge smile any time I started the line.  It just started becoming part of our bath time routine and sometimes if she was in a mood during the day I'd say the line and she'd start smiling.

The other night I was reading the book to her for the first time in several months and I got to the part where Max is leaving the island and I said "Oh, please don't go, we'll eat you up we love you so" in the monster voice and she smiled and looked back at me, but as I turned the page she started to lean in toward my face with her mouth open like she was trying to kiss me.  I thought I was imagining it so I did the line again and she did the same thing.  Then I handed her off to my husband and he tried and she tried to do the same thing to her.  He laughed and said "Well, don't kisses come after that line?  You forgot her kisses!"  It was, undoubtedly, the most adorable thing she has done to date.  I can't even handle it.  I just love her.  I love that she knows monster voice comes with kisses, and I love that she's trying to kiss people now.  I love that she's paying attention to notice all of these things and she's learning patterns and routines.  She's such a smart cookie.