Emma turned 15 months old yesterday. At her 15 month check up (which was also yesterday) she weighed in at 21 pounds 12 ounces and was 31 1/2 inches long. It didn’t seem like enough growth to me, but the doctor assured me that if she kept growing on her previous trajectory, she would be 700 pounds by the time she is 10, and that she is fine. I said ok.

In the last month she went to the National Building Museum with her friend B., had a visit from her Aunt Lexi and went to the Museum of Natural History with her, had a few play dates with E., went to Tryst for brunch with her Aunt Jocelyn, hung out with frogs at the National Geographic Museum (quite the month for museums I guess!) and watched her parents lose their MINDS over the 2008 Democratic Primary.

She loves going to day care, and they seem pretty fond of her as well. We haven’t take the plunge and added a day yet, but we are still strongly considering it.

The two biggest changes in the last month have been in her climbing and her speech.

She has decided that the most fun she can possibly have is to climb up into the armchairs in our sun room. She runs over to them giggling, and scrabbles on the seat to hoist one leg up and then the other. Every so often she looks behind her to see if we are watching and when she sees that we are, she gets a sly little smile on her face - as though she is doing something forbidden, even though we have never told her not to climb the chairs. When she finally gets herself onto the chair she stands up and grabs the back of it and laughs as if we are chasing her, which we aren’t of course.

We are actively discouraging the standing up part, since she could fall backwards. Also, at 21ish pounds she is not going to cause too much wear and tear on the seats but as she gets bigger we don’t really want her thinking standing on chairs is cool, or we will be buying new furniture every year. The other day I found her sitting in the chair reading. Really one of the sweetest things ever.

The other thing that has shifted this month is her speech. As I said last month, I have had just the very teeniest tiniest slightest amount of concern over the fact that she doesn’t say anything besides “Mama” and “Dada”, but I have been able to keep it pretty much under control. In the last month, really the last couple of weeks, although there are no new words, she has gone from what I would call “babbling”, to “chattering”. She holds entire conversations with us, or by herself - whatev - and has an amazing amount of variance in her expressions, both vocal and facial. Almost to the point that I feel a little stupid for NOT understanding her, because she is so clearly saying SOMETHING.

She also seems to be trying different combinations of vowels and consonants a lot to see how they sound together and also to see whether her parents jump up and down like morons when she hits certain combinations. She says “ess” a lot - could be “yes”, could be “moose”, could be “s” (but why really?) Just yesterday she started making an “O” with her mouth while stretching her nose out (kind of the opposite of scrunching her nose up, which she also does), but no word followed. Just the “O”. I know what you are thinking, but no, it isn’t her attempt at “Obama”, for that she seems to be working on rearranging all the syllables - “ma-o-ma” or something like that - again, nothing so clear that we can say “YES!!! OBAMA!!!!”

So there are all sorts of funny experiments going on with her face and mouth but no clear words, not English ones anyway. I really think that she is just the type that likes to get something right before she does it for real, and that all this practice with her language is going to come to fruition one day when we walk in the room and she lets us know the solution to the whole Florida-Michigan delegate debacle. Either that or she is going to shout “Moose, shut the f*@% up!”. Good times.

She learned the sign for “milk” this month and thankfully the loudness I complained of last month has morphed into her chatter which is so much more fun and pleasant to be around. Her new favorite book is “Hop on Pop” and now in addition to loving the Obama pins littering decorating the house, when we ask her “where’s Obama?” she looks down at her shirt to see if the button is there. She also beams with joy when we show her Senator Obama’s speeches or the will.i.am videos. Such a smart girl.

Obviously life with Emma just gets more and more fun and more and more joyous every day. How did we get so lucky?

Update: How could I forget? Emma also got two new teeth this month, her bottom molars, the very front ones. Are those even called molars? Dunno. Anyway, she has ‘em.