Talking

Amelia is really starting to copy what we say and use words in context. We're not sure who is having more fun - her as she realizes she can say words we understand or us hearing our little girl say things we can understand!

Tonight her basketball was on top of the cat tree (because she threw it there) and she reached and did her whine/grunt thing. I said, "Say ball please," and she did! It sounded more like, "Peas, ball, peas. Ball peas." TOO CUTE!

"Baby" Stroller

Grandma bought Amelia a baby stroller for her dolls when we were visiting in May. Fortunately, it fit in the luggage and she LOVES it! But she doesn't like there to be a doll in it, so most of the time it gets pushed around with an empty seat. The other day she put one of her small toy trains in there. Lately, she has been giving rides to various balls. I am wondering if I have a budding tomboy!

[pictures dated 7/26/07]

"Home"

I pulled into the garage this afternoon and Amelia said, "Home." How sweet! She learned the word from her 10 Ladybugs book. This is one of those books where there is one fewer bug on each page as a frog or other predator comes along. Daddy hates this book (and one like it called 5 Little Ducks) and thinks it's ridiculous that at the end all the ladybugs all of a sudden reappear. On the last page, there is one word, "Home," and Amelia said it the other day when I read her that book. The unusual thing was that I usually don't read her books, I just point things out or she points them out to me, but this time I read it and as the last page was turned but before I could read the word, she said, "Home". I think her Nana had been reading the book to her and she picked it up - and now she says it in context as we drive into the garage!

Now that she can say, "Steps," she realized she can also say, "Star," which pleases her since that is one of her favorite things. She has had a lot of fun saying, "Star," today! Her new word makes me even more excited about her name plate arriving which I ordered from Chas who does great work in both wood and canvas. Check it out:

22 Months on the 22nd

My baby is growing up so fast! I cut her bangs again this morning. This was the second time.

She said "steps" today - more than once and in context! She first said them as we were leaving church, and as she barrelled to them! She said them coming up the basement steps, too.

I get so excited when she says words, especially now because she started saying so many letters that I am starting to believe she can say as many letters as she can say words now. I haven't actually written them down to compare, though. It just seems odd that her words are just now taking off - AFTER she knows so many letters. It's like us learning how to read by sounding out, she's learning how to talk by knowing the sounds of letters. For example, she didn't say "baby" until she could say the letter "b".
Today she got to play with her new ball for the first time. It's a huge bouncy ball that we took out in the yard after Daddy got home. When we came back in she found one of her smaller balls and then started saying, "Mama!", short pause, "Baby!", short pause, "Mama!", short pause, "Baby!". I looked up to see her referring to the big ball as the mama ball and the small ball as the baby ball. So smart!

[picture dated 7/22/07]

And the Numbers Keep Coming!

Yesterday Amelia said "nine" and has consistently repeated it when she sees it. Today, the number du jour is "one" pronounced "un". So she can finally say Thomas' number. Percy (6) might be next!

So she can now say 1, 2, 5, 8 & 9. Also, she recognizes number 10 which is pretty neat. At first I was afraid she'd be confused when we "read" the books that include 10 so I explained that one with a zero is ten. I've been doing that for about a week. Today when she was pointing at numbers I asked her where the 10 was and she pointed to it!

Rabbit

We went to dinner tonight to help Daddy's friend and their friends celebrate a birthday. When the salads came, Amelia reached over and just started helping herself to my lettuce. I usually give her the tomatoes, which she loves and are full of Vitamin C and other great nutrients, but I've never fed her lettuce since it is pretty nutritionally bankrupt. She just kept helping herself, munching away and enjoying it. Daddy looked across the table and said, "She's a rabbit!"

She loves the spaghetti at this particular restaurant and tried helping herself with a fork. It was pretty cute in a "Mommy can only see the cuteness" kind of way. Her independence mixed with her own brand of self-patience and focus is really neat to see in action. She did manage to feed herself some of the spaghetti, and I did intervene on a couple of forkfuls as well.

All this food was in addition to an entire serving of applesauce, half a single serving bowl of watermelon, a few crackers, and the aforementioned salad and tomato. When we got home, it was bedtime and she still managed an entire container of Yo Baby Yogurt, which is part of our usual pre-dinner snack/meal. She can really pack it away!

On the way out a dad stopped with his carseat-ensconsed 5-month-old and asked how old Amelia is in that wistful I-can't-wait-until-my-daughter-is-that-big-and-mobile kind of way, as I admired his quiet, self contained daughter and remembered how comparatively easy it was to be able to just cart Amelia around. A moment of irony it was.

And a shout goes out to Grandpa who is also celebrating a birthday today - the big 66!

More Letters and Words

Amelia's recognition of letters is really taking off - she now also recognizes, B, E and a few others. She has started pointing at letter's on people's shirts or towards a sign and either says the letters she recognizes or looks at you expectantly so you can name them. In books she is often more interested in the letters and words than she is the pictures (or story for that matter).

Last night she said "Baby" for the first time and began applying it to the smaller of her two dinosaurs. So I said "Mama Dinosaur and Baby Dinosaur" as I pointed to the two of them and she followed suit - only "Mama" and "Baby" were understandable, though! She also said "Blanket" last night and in the past day or so has said "Balloon" instead of "Ball ball". It comes out more like "Bloom", though.

We went to Books-a-Zillion last night and when we got to the kiddie corner (or whatever they call it) I handed her a Thomas book which she began readly loudly to herself. It was pretty funny. Her little brow was furrowed and her mouth was making all these interesting shapes as she "enunciated" her words. She'd be sticking her lips all the way out at times - too cute.

On the way out I made an impulse buy of a momma duck and her three little baby ducks. Amelia's flashing quackers don't flash anymore, except for one, and all of these flashed. I was having a little buyer's remorse until this morning when I realized one of the reasons why I liked the set was the baby ducks fit on her back, just like in real life, so it's a good lesson. Right? And now that she can say baby duck and mama duck ... all the better!!

When she is eating with us she will often point to things that she wants and I usually give them to her (like the birthday card my sister sent me). When she points to my glass, though, I started a while ago saying, "No, that's mommy's juice." So lately she will point at things around the kitchen and she will identify what she can say including "Mama chair! Mama juice! Dada chair! Dada juice!" (And she finally started saying Dada again a couple of days ago which makes Daddy very happy!)

Here she is in her pajamas that our friend Mary gave her. She loves these - as soon as they are on she looks down and says, "Eaf!" for the leaf and then her "Ooh ohh ah ah!" monkey sound for the monkey.

She really, really likes her "eafs". Yesterday we went down the slide at Livia's a few times and she kept bringing one up the stairs and then throwing it down the slide first. The last time up the stairs she realized halfway up that she didn't have a leaf and she looked and me and asked, "Eaf?" It was more like she was communicating in a regular way than just proclaiming "Eaf!" and having me meet her need for one. Needless to say, I did get her one and up she went.

Here she is with some big leaves the neighbors gave her when she was over there Friday.


[pictures dated 7/14 & 7/13/07]

Letters, Numbers and a Body Part

Amelia can recognize several letters and says them quite clearly: F (pronounced 'eef', much like 'eaf' for "leaf"), H - the first one!, I, M, P (which she also says while pointing at the bathroom, this could prove embarrassing), T and X sometimes. She loves her alphabet books and I finally opened up a package of magnetic letters for the fridge.

She also recognizes and says the number 5. (so now she can say 2, 5 and 8 - and she sometimes says 8 for B.)

And the new word for the day- elbow! (ah-boo). She kept saying ah-boo and I would repeat it. After about 8 repetitions she touched her elbow and I finally understood. Duh!

[picture dated 7/7/07]

Zoo Fun!

Today was Mommy & Daddy's 9th wedding anniversary and we celebrated by going to the zoo! Mommy & Daddy were really impressed at how well Amelia responded to seeing the animals, how well she walked around by herself and listened when Mommy or Daddy told her to come a certain way and look at something.

We first saw an elephant and Amelia was amazed and had the biggest grin on her face - totally delighted and enchanted! The baby orangutan wanted to play with Amelia so badly! The little guy came up and smooshed his face up against the window trying to impress her. That's her in the little white hat in the bottom of the picture.

There were some waterfalls that Amelia really liked - she seemed to want to go swimming in the pool at the base of the falls and had to be told "no". I love the expression on her face in this one.

Future zoologist?

Here she is checking out the leopard.

[pictures dated 7/10/07]

There's a Toilet in My Living Room

Here are a few pictures that I serve up as evidence of how much Amelia loves her potty chair. It can't seem to stay in the bathroom. I came home from work last night, sat down and there it was in the living room among her other toys.

The other day we got home from a walk and she ran to the door that leads to our sunroom, opened it and apparently had it in her mind the whole time that she wanted to get to her potty because that's the first thing she did when she got out there!

But the potty isn't the only favorite thing lately. My sister sent me a birthday card that Amelia has just adored. She reads it like a book and now I've even had to tape it back together after an "uh oh". The card features a couple of her favorite things: a cat and balloons - how can she resist?

She is too young, however, to appreciate the sentiment expressed in the card, however:

[pictures dated 7/5/07]

Time Out

Amelia continues to bite & scratch from time to time. She hadn't done it in a while so I thought we were in the clear, but the other day she did it again and I put her in her crib for a "timeout". I was hesitant to do it because I didn't want her to have bad associations with her crib since she is such a good sleeper at naptime and bedtime but I didn't know what else to do. She fussed for a couple of minutes and then played. After a few minutes I went in and got her out and there was no more biting or scratching.

Tonight when I got home from work the house was really quiet and I asked where Amelia was. It turns out that she had been put in timeout just a few minutes earlier for scratching. She had fussed at first and then was fine. She heard me asking about her and squealed and I went and got her out and she was her happy self. Daddy, though, was feeling really guilty about it, and she wasn't helping by kind of ignoring him. I assured him he had done the right thing because, as he pointed out, she needed some time to re-set and unwind. Throughout the evening he made a few other comments so I know it was still bothering him and he was relieved to learn that other people put their kids in timeout at younger ages than Amelia is now. (I think it's kind of cute how bothered he feels about it - poor Daddy!)

The No-Scratch Kitty

Amelia was petting the cement kitty on our front porch so nicely. Too bad this kitty couldn't appreciate it.

I brought her potty upstairs since she is showing signs of being ready. She thinks it's fantastic and keeps talking about her "Chair" as she plays with it and moves it around the house.

She is finally saying "on" in addition to "off" and so we played a fun game of "light off!" "light on!" as directed by Amelia tonight after her pre-bedtime meal.

Here are a couple of cute slide pictures from yesterday's picnic at Livia's before the rainshower which caused lots of running around to get everything inside. Daddy picked up Amelia & Livia and got them in the house while the rest of us got food and other things inside. I wish I had the camera to get a picture of the three of them - maybe we'll stage one later. Amelia got so upset seeing me run in and out of the house she started to cry, and was instantly fine as soon as I stopped and sat with her. I love it when she's a Mommy's girl!

[pictures dated 7/4/07]

Happy 4th!

The shirt says it all:

[picture dated 7/4/07]