I can do what you can do. Well, I can atleast try.

I'm noticing that the communication barrier is beginning to dissolve. I say, "Angela, where's dada?" and she turns and looks at dada.  We play music or sing and she bops her head or, if she's standing, she bops her little bum in the air.  The other day I was cleaning the cabinets with a cloth and I could see Angela watching me so I gave her a cloth and showed her how to clean the cabinets, and there you have it, she did a wee bit of dusting. This method of imitation is very specific to what I'm drinking. If it's in a glass and I put it to my mouth, the girl wants her share and watch out if I don't let her. Diaper changes are another story. She does not like lying down and regardless of how quick we are at completing the task, she's generally screaming the whole time, unless we're lucky enough to find an object that can grasp her attention long enough to not care what we're doing with the lower half of her body. On the sleep front we have decided to do everything we can before calling a sleep consultant or letting her cry it out. After her first tooth was followed by her first infection & fever and consequently no sleep, we've actually rebounded and done better than we were before. Still atleast two wakeups per night during the hours of 12-5 and I'd like to get it down to one if not none. So the past 3 days now we've initiated a more structured bedtime routine starting at 7:30: bath, nursing, playtime on the bed, reading books, singing songs and finally rocking to sleep by around 8:30/8:45. I want to give this new schedule 2 weeks to assess our success and then figure out how to get her to start falling asleep on her own. I've finally broken down and ordered a baby sleep book to get some ideas. I can't work on baby #2 until I know that I have a shot at getting some rest before dealing with 2 children under the age of (potentially) 2.