Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Wowee, a zeppelin!

This baby, I tell you ... something new every day! Quick update before she wakes up from her midmorning nap:

Two-word phrases!
She's started stringing together more than one word -- it's been "all done" and that for awhile, but lately she's busted out "one more" (usually in re: books or kisses), "yellow washcloth", "pink star," and a few others.

Pretend play!
She's been walking around with a cup and a little spoon, pretending to feed herself and/or us whatever's in there. She makes "yum" sounds, and occasionally announces it's "all done."

Stairs
She's taking the back patio steps by herself now -- it's kind of horrifying, because they're rough concrete, but ... gotta do it sometime. At the last Sauce, she was ALL ABOUT climbing their uncarpeted wooden stairs all the way to the top (Daddy hovering inches away, of course). Heart attack city.

Other kids
She's long noticed babies (she'll point them out in books or in public and say, "baby!"), but now she's interested in other kids around her age. In the Borders with me and Mamalah, she was racing around the kids' section when she spied another girl, a 2-year-old who happened to be Asian; she stopped short, pointed at the girl, and said "aya!" (There is a half-Japanese girl at baby school, daughter of R.'s co-worker, whose name is Maya.) Then the two of them stood there pointing at each other and naming body parts till they both got bored and ran off. Pretty hilarious, I gotta say.

WORDS!
New words are hard to keep up with ... here's some recent vocab additions:
--arm
--avocado
--bite
--waffle
--chocolate
--coffee
--filter
--goldfish (as in, the cracker)
--garbage
--boot
--shoe
--sock
--outside
--drum
--orange
--freckle
--MINE
--whoa (said all Spicoli-like)
--wowee (said in Randy's tone when he says "WOW-EEE, a zeppelin!" in A Christmas Story)

Thursday, March 19, 2009

BTN update

That’s “better than nothin,” and that’s what this is! ;-)

Annika is adding words and skills at lightning speed. Here’s a partial, haphazard list of what’s happened lately:

--Eating with a fork. This one was a surprise – out for a Target prowl, Mamalah and I stopped for lunch at Marie Callender’s (it’s a pretty downmarket mall, y’all), and Annika sat in her high chair, thrilled to be at the grownups’ table. She started playing with my fork, then actually started using it on the food we brought for her! Over the course of one meal, she learned where to hold it to stab the bits of food, and how to not clock herself with it, and how not to bite it with her teeth. By dinner last night, she was using her (properly-sized) fork to eat everything but the stick of cheese, and the goldfish crackers. Amazing. And the whole restaurant was totes in love with her – she was being SO GOOD (she usually does, but it was especially apparent yesterday) and was so cute in her new outfit from babyGap. She said bye-bye to everyone as we left, hee!

--More writing. We got her some sidewalk chalk, and she’s been dividing her time between using it on our patio and stacking, piling, and tossing it in a little bucket.

--The great outdoors. We can finally let her loose out in the yard without her automatically putting EVERYTHING in her mouth – she’s more about running around than sitting down and stuffing her face with inappropriate vegetation – so we’ve been having lots of fun chasing after balls (BALL is her new thing, her favorite toy besides the frickin crayolas, aka “bababa”) and generally behaving like maniacs.

--Understanding questions and directions. She can follow some relatively complex directions; for instance, yesterday I pointed to a book on the floor and said, “Can you pick up the book and bring it to Mamalah?” She said “yeah,” and then did exactly that!

WORDS!
Mamalah
sun
crayola (bababa)
ball
yeah (for a long time, it’s just been “no!”)
washcloth
ball
enunciation of her p’s – helP, uP, etc.
attempting her name (variously, “Ana” or “Akaka”)

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Springing forward!

We all went to Skyler S.'s first birthday party yesterday, and a good time was had by all -- Annika was surprisingly good at navigating all those legs, and held her own against the three boy toddlers also at the party. Heh.

In other news:

--Proto-reading! Annika is starting to recognize certain letters, and can point them out if you ask her to; her best ones are O, B, D, and S, although she's getting there with A, T, and E. It's pretty awesome.

--Sauce party! We're trying to have as many of these as possible before the band changes membership, so we were down at the Sauce Compound last weekend. Annika had a great time, probably the best part of which was the baseball lesson Diamond Mike was giving his two boys (ages 5 and 7). She toddled around at top speed, dragging a whiffle ball bat with her, chasing down fly balls, and keeping us hopping by wandering into the base path and/or standing in the on-deck circle (behind a kid who might or might not know she was there at any given time!).

--The fridge fascination. Suddenly, she totally gets the refrigerator, and wants to investigate it every single time it's open. She knows her milk cup is kept in there, so she'll pretend she wants milk, but really she wants to stand there and pull stuff out at random. I have had to let the door close on her a couple of times -- she doesn't care. She just wants to get at all that stuff.

--Paper, pens, crayons. The MagnaDoodle, while awesome, is no longer enough. This baby wants to write, dammit. For a couple of weeks, it was enough to give her a pad of scratch paper and a pen with a cap on it, and she'd walk around like she was taking notes. Then she wanted to make marks -- so I let her, as long as she was sitting on my lap. Then I thought, why not let her at this box of washable crayons and some sheets of typing paper? She loved that -- but the problem was, those washable crayons crumble all over the place, and write on skin and cloth VERY easily, which the regular ones don't. So after a day of purple-faced baby, R. got her some regular crayons ... which she loves, but which we won't let her take out of the kitchen. That was the cause of a dramatic meltdown yesterday, and probably not the last. But I can clean crayon off the linoleum; less so the couch or the painted walls, so I'm going to stick to my guns on this one.

--Daddy's oatmeal. Annika can't get enough of her dad's daily medicinal bowl of oatmeal (which he eats without sugar, cinnamon, or anything else good). She stands there alternating bites of it with him, and making these hilarious "yum" sounds as she eats HUGE spoonfuls. She even blows on them first, having learned that from watching us. So funny!

--Brushing teeth. Our dentist gave us a little baby toothbrush, so we've been brushing her teeth every night before bed -- first mama (so I can get the job done!), then baby (she mostly just bites it, especially since her molars are coming in). She understands the concept, too; the other morning, R. was in the bathroom brushing his teeth with the electric toothbrush, and she heard it and pointed toward the door and said "teeth!"

New words!
towel
eyebrow
magnet
purple
belly
flower
blue
wall
door
bread
hat
bag
blueberries