Posey Song

I sang "Ring around the Rosey" to Amelia for the first time yesterday. By the end of the day she had requested the "Posey Song!" a zillion times ... but little did I know, until about 7:30 last night, that it was not just because she liked it, it was because she was learning it. Yep, she started singing along with me! It was so cool.

There is a train on my kitchen table. You see, she adores this train that Aunt Amy sent for Christmas. It's actually a hand-me-down from cousin Jack, and like everything else Amy has passed along, it quickly became a favorite. (And hey, as long as something is clean, working and my daughter enjoys it, who cares if other children used it before her, right?)

So how did the train get onto the table you ask? Well ... we have a bad habit of reading to Amelia while she eats to encourage her to eat more. This is leftover from her slow weight gain days and we've actually had really great quality time together singing, reading, talking, etc. in the high chair, so for the most part I really don't mind, even if there had been a strict 'no toys at the table' rule when I was growing up. (How's that for a run-on sentence? Guess who isn't an English teacher.)

Okay, so the train on the table ... and the eating ... there is a connection. When a book is finished, sometimes for the first or second time, depending on the book, Amelia will ask for another book. I will often say, "Okay, take a bite and I will go get one." Or if something is dropped I'll say, "Okay, take a bite and I'll get it." So tonight, she fed herself all her oranges and grapes. As she began eating her rice/meat/broccoli mixture she says, "Take a bite, red car." Translation: I take a bit of food and you go get the red car from my LeapFrog train. Of course, I complied, since I am one well-trained mommy (LOL). So this lasted all the way through the five cars plus engine. She sure loves that train.

By the way, have you noticed how often I use the word actually? I haven't, but Amelia has, and she's begun saying it. The funny thing is that she has a cousin Ashley, so sometimes I'm not sure if she's talking about Ashley or saying actually.

We definitely have some confusion on hair bows. She did really well for a while identifying bows in the hair of characters in her books. Now she thinks they're butterflies. We were reading her Little Pigs book the other night and she kept saying the girl pigs had butterflies in their hair and I tried telling her they were hair bows, but she looked at me like, "How dense are you? They are butterflies!" And then she simply pointed and stated, in no uncertain terms, "Butterfly!" I haven't had time to pull out a hairbow and get her butterfly-on-a-stick-pretend-it's-a-puppet craft thing from Kindermusik and try to explain in more detail that there is a difference. But I will. Soon.

And gorillas are bears. Did you know that? I've given up on that one for now. We'll worry about it after a trip to the zoo in the Spring.

[picture dated 1/16/08]

Diaper Pants

I put a pull-up on Amelia for the first time this morning, after her trip to the potty. She picked up on the difference right off and has named them diaper pants. Every few minutes she stops what she is doing and announces "Diaper pants!"

Take a Nap

Anytime there is a character in a book with its eyes closed, Amelia says s/he is taking a nap. There's a scene in her Tigger book where everyone is happy and the illustrator has decided to express that with some of the characters having huge smiles but closed eyes. So Amelia says, "Tiger take a nap! Piglet take a nap! Pooh awake!" And there is no convincing her otherwise.

Pepsi

Usually whenever we walk into a restaurant, cafeteria or other public eating place Amelia will declare, "High chair!" Lately, though, she says, "Pepsi!" She picked this up because Daddy and I order Diet Pepsi whenever we go out and she apparently likes saying the word Pepsi.

Shortly after Christmas we went to an O'Charley's thanks to a gift card. We walked in the door and Amelia announced "Pepsi!" Then we were seated and we ordered our Diet Pepsi's and she kept saying, "Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi!" The waitress thought it was adorable and was impressed when Amelia said, "Hot bread!" when the bread came.

Then a couple of weeks ago we went to a Ruby Tuesday's while we were in Lexington to see the KY Vandy game. I went to the restroom shortly after we got there and apparently Amelia went into her Pepsi routine because the waitress asked Daddy if she should bring Amelia a Pepsi. Of course, the answer was no - we don't allow her to have soda, and there is no way I am opening that Pandora's box. We have been very fortunate that she is content to simply label "Daddy's juice" and not demand to have some, and I think part of this is because we've never let her have any. (I got this idea from my sister who calls beer "Daddy soda" and her kids know they can't have any as a result of the name.) It was the first time that Amelia "ordered" something for herself, though, and that seems like a milestone.

Reading

Amelia used to be quite content to look at books and point out specific items to be named. Then she graduated from that stage and realized that just about every book has a story (not necessarily a plot) and can be read to her. The sponge she is, she remembers what was read to her and will get upset if you don't read the exact word. Sometimes she just corrects you, sometimes she makes an "eh" noise, or "eh eh" if you're not catching on. Every now and then, and it's usually before bed, she will have a meltdown over a missed word. This occured with her Pooh book when her finger was covering a crucial word and I read, "tired head" and should have known it was "sleepy head". Through tears, Amelia corrects me, "Sleepy head! Sleepy head" Pooh can rest his sleepy head! hoo hoo [crying noises]." It was terrible because no amount of apologizing or re-doing will comfort her. Sometimes accidentally skipping a page also results in a meltdown with absolutely no antidote. Poor thing. Fortunately she isn't a destructive drama queen and we are limited (right now at least) to tears and whining and just a little bit of page flaring.

Thanks to her ever improving speech skills she can let us know exactly which books she wants to read at any given moment. She usually just gets them herself, but if she's strapped into her high chair, she is stuck requesting them, and she uses the entire title sometimes which is impressive (to me at least). An example of this is her aforementioned book when she will say, "Pooh Loves You book please." She is still working on certain words. Pooh's sticky hands (from the honey, of course) sometimes sounds like stinky hands, which I find funny.

She has multiple books of certain characters like Pooh and Peter Rabbit, so she will sometimes pick up on distinctions and start referring to those books. One of her current favorites is, "Big Peter Rabbit book from Grandma!"

Of course, her language skills have allowed her to start asking for all sorts of things and demanding may not be an overstatement at times. (1-2-3 game!) Other times, it's just a running commentary on what's going on like, "Go to Nana's in Mommy's car. Sit in chair in Mommy's car. Sit in car seat in Mommy's car. Amelia's chair!"

She will recite passages of her books, like in Clifford Wants a Cookie, she'll "read" We need egg, and butter and some sugar too .... so cute, especially because she will look at me with the biggest smile, so proud of herself. Despite all the language development and recitation, when she does read to herself it's still in her own language with very few or even no English words. Amazing and adorable.

[pictures dated 1/5 & 1/3/08]

2 years, 4 months

Again, I can't believe how old Amelia is. She is amazing, as always. All day long I think of things worth noting and by the time I have time to record them, I have no brain cells left because it takes a ton of energy to keep up with her!

It was really sad to read about Heath Ledger's death. His daughter, Matilda, is just one month younger than Amelia. The proximity in age and the fact that I considered the name Matilda while I was pregnant made me feel a connection of sorts anytime I saw a picture of her. Of course, it was a bit of an imaginary connection, considering Amelia and Matilda never had a playdate or anything.

The big news at our house is Amelia's room no longer has a queen sized bed in it. We moved her little table and chairs from the sun room into her bedroom, and the toy box bench from the living room into her bedroom, and she loves it! She's been playing in there a lot, and there are fewer toys elsewhere. Plus, where it is allows me to see her easily from the living room. (Another plus to an open floor plan.)

Trees

Amelia loves broccoli. We don't eat it often, but a few months ago I made some and didn't think she'd like it yet and so it was only on my plate. She reached for it saying, "Trees!" I gave her some of the flower parts and she loved it. This happened the second and third time we've had broccoli, even though they were weeks apart, so it wasn't fluke. And I haven't corrected her either, because I think the fact that she likes to eat trees is hiliarious.

On the other hand, Amelia still doesn't like potatoes. I made mashed potatoes for the first time in a long time tonight and gave her a small bowl with her favorite spoon. She took a bite and then looked at her spoon like, "How dare you betray me? What WAS that?" I really wanted to take a picture of her furrowed brow and priceless expression but then she spotted the trees and started shoving them into her mouth like they were candy.

As a side note on her favorite spoon, she has two identical spoons which are great for self-feeding because they don't turn over as easily. I think it's a Gerber spoon and it has a loop for a handle and the spoon part is pretty deep so she can get a good amount of cereal or yogurt in her mouth each time. One of the spoons is yellow and one is blue. Shortly after our last trip home from Grandma's I couldn't find one of them and made a passing comment about maybe it's still at Grandma's. Now, if I have the nerve to serve her one of her meals without one of those spoons she sighs and says, "Yellow spoon at Grandma's." It continues to amaze me how one comment can get stuck in her head and be used completely in context at another time.

There's Poop In There!

Yesterday Amelia pooped in the potty. (And boy, there was a lot!) I wasn't in the bathroom at the time (I had already read her two books and she was content to read to herself so I left. I then heard, "There's poop in there!" and she was standing up and pointing down at it. I was very congratulatory, as usual.

I do realize all the times she has successfully used her potty are really just good timing, not a connection yet between urge and going. I figure with some consistency and regularity (haha, no pun intended), she will make that connection soon. And, just as I had suspected, it's much easier to clean her bottom after a potty poop than a diaper poop.

Yesterday evening she wasn't content with just reading during a potty break and she asked for her kitty keyboard. I couldn't help but take a picture - can you blame me? Besides, who can say that Mozart didn't start out this way?

[picture dated 1/15/08]

Helen Keller communication

We finally have a breakthrough! This morning for the very first time Amelia told me she was hungry. Oh, how relieved I am.

Amelia is a bright child - a lot of people tell me that and on most things I would agree, humbly of course. ;-) But one thing that has driven absolutely crazy is the way she will run to me out of the blue and scratch my hand. I finally figured out a few weeks ago that she was telling me she was thirsty. I had been telling her, "No, we don't scratch Mommy! That hurts Mommy!" Then I would wait a little bit before offering her juice so there wouldn't be an immediate cause and effect connection and I would nonchalantly offer her juice, which she would immediately take and drink.

Sometimes if she wasn't very hungry at supper (since she takes a long afternoon nap and usually wakes up just minutes before supper), she'll get hungry before her 7:30 "yogurt before bed" (I put this in quotes because that's what she calls it, too. so cute.) I usually feed her fruit and leftover supper, too, so sometimes she eats more before bed than she did at supper. On the evenings where she becomes hungry before 7:30, she'll find me and scratch or pinch me. VERY annoying but definitely attention getting. The hunger thing doesn't happen as much but every time she does scratch me lately I will say, "Are you thirsty? Are you hungry? Just tell me what you want." And this morning she did. Hallelujah.

On mornings where I don't go into work I usually feed her around 8:30 am, but she announced at 7:45 that she was hungry, so we made Cheerios and had banana and peaches. Then she told me she was done and ready to "get down" as she proceeded to take her own tray off. She is definitely growing up.

It seems like there's always something to figure out on this journey called motherhood, and I have to admit it is one of the harder parts of motherhood for me.

Go CATS!!!!

We were at this game. It was awesome. Amelia was at her Lexington sitter's.

We did take her to the game at Louisville where KY lost to UAB. I took her straps from her portable high chair and it made all the difference. That sounds awful, but for whatever reason, when she's strapped into a stroller or high chair, she is more content to sit.

She loves basketball and here she is trying to peer between shoulder blades and see the action. We were only 14 rows back and they were great seats.

She loves running around the house saying "Go Big Blue! Go Cats!" We're trying to teach her "C-A-T-S CATS CATS CATS". She has the CATS CATS CATS part down really good.

[picture dated 12/15/07; video dated 1/8/08]

Tiger

Amelia calls Tigger "Tiger". Not until she started doing this, did I even realize that Tigger was tiger with an extra 'g'. Duh, you may say, but Pooh and Tigger didn't factor into my childhood much. I had a Pooh crib mobile, which my daughter also used, and I could recognize the characters and maybe read a story or two, but that's it.

I mentioned the Tigger/tiger epiphany in the church nursery this past Sunday and the teenage girl there pipes up, "Oh, yeah, he's a tiger, T-I-double G grrr!" and it immediately hit me ... videos. There were no videos and VCRs until I was a teenager. Nor microwaves in people's kitchens (although probably in institutions). I have become my grandmother.

I used to think my maternal grandmother had it pretty neat. She was born in 1905 and had seen so many changes. Now that I've seen first-hand that full-grown teenagers have no idea what it's like to not have a slew of videos as childhood entertainment, I feel I've reached that place already because I can tick off a number of items I've used personally (electric typewriter with carbon paper, for example) that they will never know, and I feel old.

In the picture Amelia is using the rocking chair from my childhood. In a phone conversation with my dad in early September, he had mentioned it for some reason. Now that it has become her new favorite toy this past week - even though it's been in our living room since before she was born, and she has used it infrequently prior to now - I wish I could share the pictures with him, too, and the videos of her rocking in it while laughing. Of course, there will continue to be lots of things that will make me wish he was still here.

And on the potty training front: we had another successful sit this evening before bed. Same scenario, she hangs out with a book; I go away. Several minutes later she comes running out and I go in just as her butt sits back down. I congratulate her and she says, "Ten more minutes!"

Potty Time

Amelia will kill me for this when she is old enough to read this blog ... but she peed in the potty this morning!!!! I am so excited! (Can you tell?)

After she woke up this morning and had been toddling around for just a couple of minutes, I asked her if she wanted to go potty and I took her diaper off and she sat on her little potty. I walked away for a few minutes since I was getting ready for work and needed to pack her lunch. She came running out and I asked her if she went. She ran back in and sat down. I followed her in and looked, and she had gone! She didn't seem too excited about it, despite me saying, "Great job, Amelia! You peed in the potty! Yay!" In fact, she held out her hand and said, "Ten more minutes!"

I let her sit for a few more minutes and then convinced her we should go ahead and get dressed so we could go to Nana's. I've given her a few more opportunities today, but nothing else has happened. But she is happy to sit there for a few minutes, rather than popping up after five seconds like she used to prior to this weekend, so that's good.

Colors

It may be indicative of her expanding vocabulary or it may be a fascination with colors, but Amelia has begun labeling almost everything with its color. It's not just "cat" anymore but "orange cat", or for an extreme example it's not "Daddy's shirt" or even "Daddy's blue shirt", it's "Daddy's Kentucky blue shirt".

Her sentences continue to be more complete and descriptive and I love hearing her express herself.

Sophia

When we found out we were having a girl we struggled to pick a name. My criteria was pretty demanding. I wanted a name that:

* was not too common (I checked the census records and was chagrined to find Emma so popular for several years in a row) or too unusual (although I do like Willow)

* did not have an automatic nickname (I like Matilda but was afraid people would call her Matty and she'd be lumped with all the Maddy's short for Madison)

* did not end in a long e sound since it would rhyme with our last name (which ruled out Lilly, one of my favorites ... and I didn't like Lillian nearly as much)

* her daddy agreed upon (isn't that nice of me?)

Amelia was put out there fairly early and, obviously, that's the name we chose, albeit pretty late in the pregnancy. Never having known an Amelia, it was a little hard to really "own" the name for my daughter before she was born and we would occasionally entertain other name ideas. While walking I would often hear the name Sophia float through my head. I wondered if it was my baby girl telling me that should be her name. That may sound a little strange but when I was little I used to wish my name was Elizabeth. (I had dreams of becoming Queen Elizabeth III. My father straightened me out on that one.)

I never brought Sophia up as an option because I couldn't get the image of Sophia from "the Golden Girls" out of my head. This week when the media informed us that Sophia now replaced Emma as the number one name for baby girl, *phew!* was my first thought. I told Amelia's daddy about it and he said, "Eww, Sophia, I never would have agreed to it anyway." Well, now I can stop worrying about whether I should have ever said anything about it after getting home from those long walks!

Now Taking Requests

Amelia is really into making song requests which has us becoming more of a singing family than I ever thought possible. (I am not a big fan of singing as I am not a very good singer.) She asks for everything from "Tomorrow song, please!" (from Annie) to "Sing Sorry song!" (as in Sorry, Charlie).

Since she knows her letters so well, we've started telling her what some of the letters can stand for such as "A is for Amelia". Then we introduced her to the "A is for Amelia" song done to the tune of "C is for Cookie". She now asks for the "N for Nana song" and "G is for Grandma song!". One of her favorites is "D is for Daddy song". [have you noticed what is missing?]

We've created a bit of a monster I fear. Since she loves songs so much sometimes she demands one that doesn't exist. "Sing Bunny song Mommy!" results in me coming up with some little jingle just to see her smile, which she does since she loves anything that resembles music.

Now that Christmas is over we wonder if the very demanding requests for "Jungle Bells! Sing Jungle Bells song please!!" will cease.

Guess who likes the snow?

If you guessed Amelia, you are correct! She had so much fun walking in it and made zig zags throughout the yard. Her little cheeks became rosy and it was pretty cold outside, so after about ten minutes I decided we should go back in where it's warm. Amelia did not agree. I had to pick her up with her little legs kicking, poor thing. The upside is there was less snow on her shoes!

I was trying to get a good picture of her rosy cheeks and delighted smile, but I couldn't get her to look up at me because she was so fascinated with the snow. It went crunch crunch under her feet, and it was everywhere!

[pictures dated 1/2/08]

Hello Grandma!

And Happy New Year!

[video dated 1/1/08]