Play Ball

Everyone knows who man's best friend is. Lesser known is who a baby's best friend is and that someone is spelled: B-A-L-L. This may not be true for all babies but, in our home, the ball is your best friend, Rai.
You've loved balls for many months. Your Grandma and Grandpa have been fostering this love for a long time. Every day, they give us an update on the latest stage in your relationship with 'the ball'. One day, you were able to stop a ball rolled to you, the next day, you could give it a push and roll it back. Later, you could catch a ball thrown to you and soon after that, you threw it back, two-handed and with some force. The latest: you were making baskets in a tiny basketball hoop hung on the wall.
We knew that this love was more than a passing affair when you began to say "ball" in the past few weeks. This is probably the first word that you intentionally say. Even while your "mamas" and "dadas" continue to be thrown out randomly and without any proper association, the word "ball" is spoken with recognition and intent.
To give your best friend a face, we bought you a frog-faced ball the other day and, using your special reading development DVD, we hope that you soon string together your first two-word phrase: "play ball"!