Smile!

This morning Amelia left her hair bow in for minutes at a time so I decided to take her picture. I said, "Smile Amelia!" and this is what I got:

I was laughing too hard to try to take any more pictures. Both her father and I looked at the picture and immediately thought of the Monty Python sketch about the rabbit with "Big Teeth Like This!" and we had a good laugh. We are so enjoying her cuteness.

One of the toddler pronunciations I forgot to share in yesterday's post was teats for [cat] treats. She said it again today when Maynard was eating his treats and we were like, no, Amelia those are tReats. Maynard's been off the teat for a while now. (Seriously, we told her that.)

[picture dated 8/26/07]

Travel-hoes and Rabbit Feet

This morning Amelia looked at her cereal and gleefully announced "Travel-hoes!!" as she dug in with her spoon. From the other room Daddy said, "Aren't those the girls that follow rock bands around, like groupies?" I said, no, it's Amelia's Cheerios.

Pronunciations are funny. Yesterday she named Thomas and Percy, but it came out Thomas and Pussy.

After breakfast I was getting dressed. When I came back into the kitchen Amelia was sitting on a cow pillow with her mooing cow moving in front of her. I think she's developing a fondness for cows. She'll say "Cow!" and then "Moo!" She may not actually have a preference for cows since she loves her "Pig book!" (If You Give a Pig a Pancake) and now says "Oink!" after naming any pig she sees.

When I fed her chicken at lunch, I told her what she was eating, like I usually do, and she said, "Bock bock bock!" and proceeded to eat her chicken with no compassion whatsoever for the animal, even though she had apparently made the connection. So she's like her daddy - not only does she loves to eat meat (and she does), it's incidental to her that a living, breathing animal died to provide her with protein.

Getting back to the scene in the kitchen ... it wasn't a cow-inclusive scene. She had her bunny slippers on when she first sat down and then proceeded to take them off, saying "Rabbit feet off, rabbit feet off." She's been saying rabbit for a week or so now, and it is so adorable (to me) the way she says it - usually without the "r". The picture really doesn't capture the cuteness of the scene.

I am amazed at the words she knows that I didn't teach her, which means she picked them up somewhere else, or that I only told her once. She has a lift-the-flap book that has cupcakes under one of the flaps and she has remembered that word ever since the first time I told it to her. I forget that she knows the word and am amazed when she correctly names the cupcakes. But there are other words like chips - which she wanted in the grocery store the other day - that I didn't teach her and happens to be a food we don't eat. That makes me wonder where she might be getting chips. Then today in the store I was trying hair bows on her (but didn't name them) and she was running around patting her head, saying "Hair bow! Hair bow!" She knew what they were without me telling her. And no, they didn't stay in long.

When she falls or runs up against something she'll run to me, without crying, and point to whatever body part that has been affected, name it and then cry. Kissing it or holding her doesn't make it better, though. She prefers if I just make a sad face and say, "Poor baby!" Then she laughs and runs off.

This naming of the body part is not only cute (I'm her mother, everything is cute except the biting and scratching), but it's really helpful when she does have a fall to know what she hurt. As Daddy pointed out, her communication skills have really improved.

Every stage is still so wonderful. I remember being amazed at her when she was 5 months old. Now I see small babies and think how helpless they are. I just adore my toddling wonder who is growing up so fast!

[pictures dated 8/25/07]

23 Months Old!

I can't believe Amelia is almost two. To celebrate, today we had our first official trip to the Library. We have a small library in our town, even smaller than the one in the town where I have my first library memories. In that library, like the one in the larger town down the road, the children's section was in the basement. As Amelia and I turned right to explore the children's section in what is now "her" library, I thought I caught a faint basement smell and couldn't help but think of my own memories. sniff sniff. (The summer cold probably doesn't help either.)

Amelia wasn't sure what to make of the shelves of books but she quickly spotted, among the many children's books standing on top of the Mommy-waist-high bookshelves Good Night Moon which is one of her all-time favorites. She immediately began asking for it, reaching with her arm and saying "Moon! Moon!" I gently explained that we weren't here to read books she already had but to read books that were new to her. She responded, with arm stretched upward, "Moon! Moon!" It didn't help that Goodnight Moon was sitting right above where I was trying to locate If You Give a Moose a Muffin. She loves If You Give a Pig a Pancake, and I've already ordered If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, so I figured we'd check out the Moose one. She wasn't too interested, but there was If You Give a Pig a Party and that one sparked some interest, so we took that one. While I was scanning through the Laura Numeroff books she discovered it was great fun to run up and down the aisle that was created by the bookshelves. Since she was quiet about it, and there were only two other people in the library, I let her do it or a few minutes. I figured it was her toddler way of exploring and enjoying the library, and I want her to learn to love it as much as I do.

After a few minutes, I took her over to a bin of stuffed animals, but she wasn't interested, so I helped her into one of the chairs at the children's table. Unfortunately, there isn't much room for feet that stick up, so she didn't have as much freedom as she liked, so she got down after a couple of minutes. While she was there, she spotted a Clifford book and I got it for her. She leafed through and said "Doggy" a few times. As we left the children's section, she discovered it was fun to walk along the row of books and lightly run her hand across the spines. When we checked out I let her hand the librarian the card and I was surprised when Amelia actually did it, rather than doing her "shy act" and burying her head in my shoulder.

Before heading home we went by CVS since they have diapers on sale. On the way out, the clerk hollered to Amelia, "Bye little guy!" The last time she wore this outfit she was told she was a "Handsome Fella". The little ice cream cones on front weren't super obvious to either person, but still, I didn't think this outfit looked little boyish. Oh well.

[picture dated 8/22/07]

Self Feeding

I realized a few days ago that I'm not doing Amelia any favors by continuing to spoon feed her entirely by myself. There have been times that she's wanted to try to feed herself and of course it's pretty messy, but she's got to learn sometime and if I don't do it soon, she may decide she doesn't need to even try. She's already gotten to the point where she is perfectly content to read books, draw with crayons and play with small toys while I feed her. This is not a good habit because she's already started to expect me to feed her while she plays as evidenced by her new lack of interest in using her fork with her fruit. Plus, if she feeds herself then I'll get to feed myself while we're all at the table. WHAT a concept.

So over the last few days I've given her one of her spoons (rather than the regular sized plastic spoons I've been using) and let her feed herself until she stopped. At that point, we reverted back to her playing while I fed her. It's going well and this morning she ate almost all of her cereal (Cheerios with milk) by herself!

All the books and magazines talk about how toddlers need so many different skills and fine motor muscle coordination to feed themselves. I can see this in action with Amelia because she will do really well for about 7 or 8 spoonfuls and then invariably she scoops, raises and then wham! full spoon goes against closed mouth - because she forgot to open it.! I have tried really, really hard not to laugh (and succeeded), as she continues with the next scoop, undeterred by the temporary setback.

Naming Body Parts

Amelia not only knows her numbers, letters, and many colors, she also knows most of her body parts.

The other day my mother-in-law asks me, "Did you teach her the word boob?" And I was like, "Um, no, I don't think so," as my mind started thinking of how and when I would have used that word. Since nothing immediately sprang to mind, I thought, hmm, let's ask Amelia! So I touched her chest and said, "Amelia, what is that?" And she gave me a blank stare. Same thing when I touched mine. Meanwhile, my mind is still going, trying to come up with something, and I say, "Well, she knows belly button and tummy ... belly is kind of close to boob maybe?" And I explained that even when I was breastfeeding I only said "milk" as in "Amelia, do you want some milk?" (which got me in trouble in the grocery store once when I commented aloud that we needed some milk and she immediately looked at my chest. uh oh.)

It's not that we've purposely avoided naming that body part for her, it just hasn't happened yet. After the usual eyes, ears, nose and mouth, we've had more fun with chin, cheeks and even wrists (which she calls sh-thsh). So I let it go for the time being and five minutes later it dawned on me.

About ten days ago or so, she scratched herself during the night. Perhaps it was a bug bite, I don't know, but she went to bed without it and woke up with it and it's taking its sweet time to heal. You may have noticed it in the Happy Birthday Grandma photo below.

Amelia was telling her Nana that she has a boo boo on her chest.

First Set of Skinned Knees

Courtesy of a playdate at Noah & Eli's house yesterday morning.

I took this picture while she was sitting in her "eat chair" getting ready for breakfast. She was in charge of clicking herself in, as usual. The nightgown she has on has a little bow on the chest and she LOVES pointing at it and exclaiming, "BOW!".

[picture dated 8/18/07]

Thank You Baby Einstein

I don't care what they are saying now about Baby Einstein. Amelia has loved Baby Mozart since she was two months old and has loved the ones for older children as much. She can say "galaxy" and "Mars" (was Marf for a while) because of Baby Galileo. And now she is starting to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" due to the same video!!!! Singing! My girl! I am about beside myself. I discovered this the other night when I started to sing it and she tried to continue into the next part. When I picked it back up, she joined in. !!!! My heart is melting.

Happy Birthday Grandma!

Dear Grandma,

Mommy thought it would be cute for me to put a handprint in the birthday card I sent you. I did not agree. She put my hand in the gloppy blue paint and I promptly waved my arm while whining in protest. This gave the kitchen - including the table, floor, chairs and dishwasher - a nice splatter effect by the way. I then smeared my very wet, blue hand all over my clothes. After all this, would you believe Mommy still insisted on trying to get a handprint? Did she not understand that I was in no mood to be artistic? Or compliant? So I got stripped down and had fun running around the house wearing nothing but my diaper and hat.

Fortunately, I was recently introduced to crayons thanks to a trip to a local restaurant and I have more fun putting them in and taking them out of their little box. Eventually, I bowed to Mommy's will and I drew you the pretty picture you found inside your card. You'll notice that I used only three of the four colors available to me. While I enjoy naming the red crayon along with the others, I only like to actually use the yellow (wewwoh), green (kree) and blue ones. You will notice I really like blue the best. That's because I'm a Kentucky fan, but you already know that. Mommy tried to get me to use some red (ed) for diversity, but she doesn't understand an artist's need to express herself rather than a pragmatist's need to use everything that happens to be available. I'm still working on her, but it may be a lost cause. You probably already know that.

While I'm not there to give you one of my fabulous hugs, or show you how I can kiss now, or run screaming up and down your hall stopping only to do my happy feet stomping dance, I wanted you to know that I wish for you a very happy birthday.

Love,

Amelia

[photos dated 8/13/07]

Pooh Juice

Amelia hasn't been too wild about milk. At first this wasn't much of a concern to me since she nursed until mid-March.

She was using a sippy cup for juice before she started using a sippy cup for milk - I was still putting milk into a bottle until she was about 18 mos. old, partly because she was still working through the stash of frozen breast milk. Once she was taking just regular (goat) milk, I always put it in a different sippy cup from her regular juice sippy cup (which is a Playtex cup). Part of the reason I don't use the same sippy cups for milk and juice is I can't stand the smell of milk and plastic - I can always smell it no matter how well it's washed and it's gross and I didn't want that smell mixed with her juice.

Amelia never liked the Avent sippy cups, although I would still use them from time to time. She did seem to like the Nuby ones which was fine until she had enough milk and would turn it upside down and push down on the soft top, causing the milk to flow out. Messy. So I would try to watch her closely which isn't always easy or fun to do.

When we visited Grandma in May, we used one of those throwaway cups and Amelia seemed to really like it. I remembered I had some Pooh ones like it at home and Voila! Pooh juice was born. (I also discovered about a month ago that, while she didn't show a preference for cold or warm milk earlier, she now likes it better if I warm up the milk to at least room temperature.) So all summer she has asked specifically for "Pooh juice!" when she wants it and I no longer have to worry about her dairy, vitamin D, etc. intake being too low. (She still eats yogurt every day but cheese is come and go since she reacts to it like she did cow milk.)

[picture dated 8/5/07]

Chair as a Verb

We took Amelia to the local college campus to run around with her friend Livia. True to form, Amelia did not want to do what we thought she'd want to do, which was run around in the grassy areas chasing her balls which we brought with us. She instead wanted to climb up and down the stairs of the various buildings. In a futile attempt to get her interested in the grassy areas, I picked her up and carried her almost to a tree on the other side of the area, in front of two buildings that had no stairs. She rewards my efforts by becoming insanely interested in the empty fountain, begging with her "unh unh unh" to go inside. Since we were too dense to understand (actually we were being too stubborn to comply, but we acted dense for her benefit), she retrieved one of her balls, her biggest one in fact, the one she calls Mama Ball. She begins running toward the empty fountain (which is the size of an above ground wading pool with a 3 foot cement wall and perfectly flat floor). Her daddy and I look at each other and I say, "You know what she's going to do, right?" And he, of course, nods. Sure enough, Mama Ball goes sailing into the fountain as Amelia turns around to look at us like, "How will we get it out?" So Daddy goes in the empty fountain. Soon Amelia is in there, too. She is SO happy, she's doing her happy feet dance. Then she spots me looking at her and points with a completely triumphant grin on her face as she stands next to her daddy. A passing father, who is there with his daughter as she learns to ride her training wheel-clad bike, grins knowingly at me in commiseration.

Later we took the girls to a different area of campus and they still were interested in stairs and we just gave in. It was cute - Amelia and Livia were sharing their balls. Livia would drop or throw hers, Amelia would retrieve it and hand it to Livia. Livia would respond with a version of "Thank you." Very cute. They both got lots of practice going up and down stairs and Amelia is doing a good job of finding a railing or low wall to support herself on the way up, and waits for Mommy's hand on the way down.

Amelia then started sitting on each step as she was going down. After the second one she looked at me and said, "Chair!". I was like, sure, chair, whatever. She says this whenever she sits on something, including the dishwasher door when it's in the down position and the rack is still inside. She repeated, "Chair!" and pointed at me emphatically. I got it - she was saying "Sit!". She wanted me to sit with her and I did, and she was happy.

Happy is a word she says now, out of the blue. She smiles at me and says, "Appy!" It's so cute. I can only wonder if she knows what it means.

On the way to the car we passed the local community theatre and well dressed folks were starting to head in for tonight's show. Amelia wanted to walk the stairs and I let her. And yes, I enjoyed the panic I imagined some folks were having that a toddler might be attending tonight!!! Bwah haha, Mommy has an evil streak!

This Little Piggy

I've done "This Little Piggy" a couple of times with Amelia over the past couple of days and she LOVES it. When I get to the pinky toe she will run her hand up to her belly and say "Home!" I still do it, too, and she giggles with her biggest smile which gives her those upside down crescent moon eyes. Pure delight!

Last night she touched Daddy's big toe as he sat in the recliner and he started with, "This little piggy went to market," and proceeded through the nursery rhyme as she touched each toe. Sure enough, she got to the pinky and as he said, "And this little piggy ..." she scooted her hand along his leg and reached towards his tummy and said, "Eeee Home!" So cute and so smart!