Kisses?

Madeleine and I have really been breaking our backs trying to teach Rebecca how to give kisses. We try to make a big show of giving each other kissies, making big kissy noises and smiling and being happy afterwards. This is often preceded and followed by giving Rebecca lots of kissies on the forehead, cheeks, lips, eyes, hands etc etc etc.

She really hasn't made much of an effort, though. She'll make smacking noises, but only in a playful repetition game sort of way, and they're lips-in smacks, not lips out kissy smacks.

Anyway, that was until a couple days ago, where we were having family play time in bed and Rebecca very deliberately leaned in to mommy's cheek and made a big lips-in smacking noise.

We like to wait for reproducibility before claiming success in new skills development, but this one was borderline, it seemed pretty cut and dried.

Anyway, the three of us were sitting in her rocking chair for some late night cuddles (the girls on my lap) and she repeatedly leaned in and gave mom combinations of sloppy open mouth and very moist closed mouth kisses tonight. Quite a lot of fun. I think after the first she got so much positive feedback that she just kept doing it.

I really wonder how much she explicitly understands. Does she have the foggiest idea what 'I love you' means yet? She hears it a lot. She quite obviously 'gets' hugging. Hopefully she's starting to understand kisses too.