Friday, July 3, 2009

Full speed ahead!

Reading!
Thanks to the dreaded Llama Llama books -- which she loves, and we kind of hate because that little llama is a frickin BRAT -- she can now recognize the word "mama" in print. She's also pretty confident with "daddy" and "baby." This is how it starts ...

The Brady Bunch
We have a Brady Bunch calendar, and from it, she's learned to correctly identify all nine of the members of the Brady household by name and photo. Ain't nobody can say we ain't raisin this baby right!

Helpfulness
Annika's always been a very helpful baby, but she's taking it to new levels now. Her favorite thing is to toss stuff in the garbage -- here, at the post office, at the coffee shop, wherever -- and she likes to try to dress herself (oh my god, is it hilarious when she gets one of Daddy's socks on, or puts a pair of pants or a shirt on over whatever she's wearing!), plus she loves to bring stuff to you or even pick up toys (which we have to do before going to bed or naptime). And of course she loves to help unload groceries. It is so cute, and she's SO PROUD of herself!

Left and right
She knows which is her left and right now -- we've always said stuff like "Left arm in, now right arm in" when putting shirts on, etc., and now she can point to the correct side when you ask, say, "Where's your left foot?" She's starting to get the idea that that can be part of directions, too -- like when she's trying to find the little mega bouncy ball, and you tell her it's to her left, she gets that as an instruction and tries to work with it.

Singing
Besides the ABC song, she's been known to make up her own little ditties; I think we got video of her singing a strange little meandering song that sounded Farsi to us, in the bath the other day. She sings to herself in the crib or in the carseat, sometimes recognizable tunes, sometimes her own originals. I don't have to tell you that this is beyond cute!

Matching
She has this Fisher-Price Little People book, from which she's learned a lot of new words (octopus, crab, etc.), which teaches various concepts & skills. One of the pages is all about finding pairs of things behind little flaps -- two sea lions, two starfish, etc., and she's really good at putting them together. And we're seeing her doing that with real stuff too -- matching shoes, like-colored eggs, same-shape books, etc. Pretty cool!

Life skills
(Heh.) With the aid of the footstool, she's made a big step forward on doing more things for herself; she likes to brush her teeth and wash her hands at the bathroom sink, and is very into trying to brush her own hair, and investigate things with the aid of the added height of the footstool. She used it the other day to try to get at some stuff on the kitchen cabinet, and was displeased when I would not allow her to ... knifework is still a few years away, though, kid.

Phrases, sentences, giving instructions
You gotta hear this baby saying, "Oh, no!" when she sees something out of order, or exclaiming "All right!" when she approves. Hysterical! But also, she's stringing words together in meaningful ways now, of her own volition. One morning when I had the early shift, she was shrieking happily about something, so I pointed toward our bedroom and said "Shhh!" She went wide-eyed and said, "Shhh -- Daddy sleepin!" Bout knocked me to the floor ... and she's giving instructions: "Mommy, sit down." and asking questions: "Help Daddy?" "Play elephant?" (when she wants to ride the elephant rocking-horse Uncle J. and Aunt J. gave her).

Getting active
This baby is now a pro on stairs, going up and down, and now prefers to walk even pretty long-for-a-toddler distances (such as back home from the coffee shop, which if we go the long way is about 4-5 blocks, plus all the running up and down the ocean walk portion of the route -- WOW does she love that!). Her favorite thing is a baby swing, but if one is unavailable, she's just happy to be a runnin fool.

Eskimo kisses
As I mentioned in the last post, R. taught her how to do the nose-to-nose Eskimo kisses, and now that's a part of our nighttime routine -- that plus her real kisses and "I love YOU"s ... well, it's hard not to die of cute right there.

Baby-school dropout
Well, not dropout, but we found out when R. went to pick her up yesterday afternoon that the baby-school lady's father had died unexpectedly and she was on her way back to Iran for three weeks (problem the first, since now we have to get some kind of coverage between now and when my mom comes out at the end of the month) and leaving the situation in flux upon her return (problem the second, since she is moving and may not be able to provide care in the new place, so we may be looking for a new regular baby-school setup).

WORDS!
eat
book
sleep, sleeping
zebra
snake
beak
phone (formerly "he-yoh")
fly
bug
napkin
cup
grapes
work
computer
Gossie (of "Gossie & Gertie" fame)
top
numbers (the word -- she already can say 1-9)
garbage
piece
rain
stripes
dots
llama
mat
groceries
Abby, Noah, Alonzo (her daycare buddies)
crab
bicycle
stool
cloud
ocean
post office
messy
juggle (often with helpful gestures)
ceiling
spin
sticker
ice cream
parachute
elephant
octopus
hose
play
heavy
stool, footstool (her precioussss)
balloon ("badoon")
walk
run
umbrella (can't remember if I put this one on before)