Settling in?

So perchance we are finally settling in. We made a trip to the Encants outdoor market that's open on the weekends in search of a few items to warm up our emptyish apartment. We found a nice blue wooden chair for Lily there. Later at IKEA, we found a mismatched table and red chair to go with the initial find, a felt mobile of bunnies and sheep, and a rug with roads and castles on it. So, all-in-all, Lil has had a pretty cool learning area added to her now-much-cooler play area. In the street the next night, we found a cool worn blue wooden table which is playing the role of end table for the time being.

The little table and chairs have helped focus Lily's oft bountiful energy such that we can actually get her to sit and talk ABCs and animals for 10 minutes or so at a time. She has also taken a great interest in writing in the last weeks. Grasping her fat crayons like pencils, placing her elbows firmly on the table and hunching over her paper so that her nose is only an inch from it, she spends long periods making wispy strings of pretend cursive. She also reads nonsense stories to us in a garbled Lily language, running her finger over the words on the pages of books or backs of DVD boxes. And finally, she loves listening to nursery rhymes, and I quite enjoy watching her drag the big nursery rhyme book from the coffee table to our bedroom at bedtime.