OK, I guess that I should catch up from the holidays here. So much is going on that it’s been a whirlwind, Christmas, then traveling to visit friends and family over New Years, plus finding out about getting a outreach grant at church. That last one is exciting and scary at the same time. We have an awesome core group of volunteers, some new people expressing interest, and a Pastor that’s steadily behind us. More on all that some other time.
This last month has been amazing in terms of development. Temper tantrums are starting in full force, although they are mild compared to some I’ve seen and heard. I just wish she’d have one in front of close friends and family, who all think she’s a perfect angel!!!
Talking - well, now that’s another story. The words are starting to pour out, and the contexts are starting to match what she says in many cases.
Mama and Dada have morphed into Mommy and Daddy. This is a relief because she often will say “Dat Dat” which means “What’s That” and everyone thinks she’s asking for me. Even I had trouble telling the difference once in a while. What’s really cool is that she totally get’s mommy and daddy because she will sometimes find something in the house that belongs to either parent that isn’t around, such as finding my sneakers and declaring them “Daddy!”. Just this past week, CJ has taken to calling our names out from another room. This is actually encouraged because she neeeds to start learning how to properly gain our attention when she needs something. Grunts and sign language don’t work very well if we’re not looking at her. The fun thing will be controlling development then once she’s old enough to know she’s interrupting (a pet peave of mine).
As for saying her name - this comes and goes, but she can do it. For some weird reason she prefers to whisper it. It comes out as “Carmy”, which is similar to “Ahmmy”, which equals Amen.
Another similar favorite word is “Abby” which is the name of one of her favorite books, and now the name she has given the doll she received for Christmas. Obviously, she doesn’t quite get this yet, but Abby is the name of a little girl (about 5) who goes around the house pestering her big brother to read her baby book to her. She also is starting to ask questions about having been adopted - very cute and well written.
On top of all that - out of the blue a few weeks ago, she declared an apple to be exactly that - an “Apple” - spoken plain as day. This is not a word we remembered working on with her, but we were eating a lot of them at the time. She loves to say apple, and it just tickles us whenever it comes out of her mouth. Just yesterday, CJ stood in front of the fridge and said - Mommy, Apple! I know, I know, big deal - but it’s the small stuff that fascinates.
Some other words that have come along - PopPop, MomMom, mole (yah the kind on your skin), doggie, Ellie our cat’s name), let’s go, no-no-no-no (ugh), love you (which comes out “da do”). I’m sure there are at least a dozen others that I’m missing. Oh yah - Yummy yummy yummy - it seems to come out in just that manner!
Just to totally catch up - here’s some pictures…
Trying out pigtails:
Rolling gingerbread dough - too bad Daddy’s not fond of gingerbread”
Cutting the dough - she was completely enthralled:
Some Christmas posing shots - you can see which got picked for the card in the previous post:
CJ’s Fun Christmas gift!
Making Pumpkin Pie for our monthly community dinner:
I had a stretch of time during our trip to see Grandpa where I was taking a picture of how we found her asleep. When she’s in the pack n play, it’s much easier to snap these shots. As you can see, she likes to take her PJs off. In fact, we discovered soon after this that no matter what she has in the crib with her, she’ll play with it for up to 2 hours before going to sleep. We put an end to that pretty quickly and now bed-time is time to go to sleep.
In this picture, you can see one of her other main Christmas presents - a new doll - now named Abby, along with her other favorite, Curious George (Jorge el Curioso), and Buster (tentative name) the blue footed booby.
Using the easel some friends grabbed for us off of freecycle:
Posted on January 19th, 2009 by admin
Filed under: Thoughts, Uncategorized
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