Are You?

R's new thing:

aaaare yoooou?

She says it all the time, walking around the house.

PopPop, aaaare yoooou?

Gammie Gampie, aaaare yoooou?

The other day after peeing in the potty, J told her she could just use the washcloth once she got back in the tub. Instead of walking back over to me so she could get back in the tub, she started walking around the bathroom searching...

Washcloth, aaaaare yoooou?

She says it when she's staring straight at us, when we're doing something else (looking at a piece of paper, talking to the other parent, eating food).

Mommy, aaaare yooooou?

Daddy, aaaare yoooou?

We tried to get her to say WHERE are you, but that only happened a couple of times.

We hear "aaaaare yooooou" attached to just about every person or thing imaginable, twenty to thirty times a day.

I started saying to her this morning,

R, aaaaare yoooou?

and she said

Mommy, aaaaare yooooou?

Whose Princess?

Looks like Grampie's got some competition....

Learning Letters

Whenever R and I color she tells me what to draw. Today it was babies, but in the past it's been "circle, right here, right here" or "tiagle" or "dat" or "duck", always with a finger pointing to the spot where she wants the drawing done. Then she usually proceeds to color on or in the thing I have just drawn.

Sometimes I sneak in my own drawings alongside the things I've been commanded to draw. The other day I drew an "R" and told R it was "R" for R_____. I've done that a few times now, and she now says "R for R_____" while pointing to herself whenever I ask her what it is.

Today I added in "M" for Mommy and "D" for Daddy. She gets them! I think.

I haven't given her a pop quiz yet but maybe I'll get her to take one tomorrow.

Latest Song Favorites

Lately, R is really into singing "Bingo" -- she shouts out "I G O!" in the mostly-right spots in the song.

She regularly chimes in to "Old MacDonald" with "E I E I O" (or sometimes, what sounds like "eee-yi-o") and the occasional appropriate animal sound.

She's not a fan of my singing too much (which is fair, considering that I have no pitch, tone, melody, or rhythm), and sometimes when I try to get her to sing, she just says, "No, Mommy, No, Mommy" with the occasional finger to her lips and "Shhhh!"

My parents got her a new CD for Easter with tons of kids songs on it and she gets especially animated when the "Hokey Pokey" comes on although she doesn't do many of the movements except the clapping bit.

She's been singing this song for awhile but it's still a favorite: "The Wheels on the Bus." She knows all the hand movements and says some of the refrains ("moo back"; "up and down"; "waah waah"; "shhh shhh")

Personality

When R is home with me and J, she is a HUGE chatterbox. She talks, yells, sings, shouts. She also has a real bossy side, too. She's frequently telling us where to go, what to do, what she wants to do, etc. I must hear "sit down Mommy!" "read-a book read-a book" "no-no Mommy!" "color here!" "right here, right here" a hundred times a day.

I was curious how she is around the other kids at her day care, especially since she can be so bossy around us, so I asked her day care teacher. Interestingly, the word the day care teacher used to describe R was "cautious." She said R will spend time watching the other kids before she decides to participate, and that she is very careful when she tries something new. (These sound like very good things to me!)

But it was a little strange because I don't know if "cautious" is a word I would have previously used to describe R.

Then on Saturday R and J and I spent all morning at the park. The weather was absolutely glorious. R couldn't get enough of climbing, swinging, running, laughing, and generally having an all-around excellent time. Before too long, two other parents showed up, each with 2 kids, so there were 5 kids running and jumping around the playground equipment. Two of the kids were definitely older than R-- probably 3ish--and had much more confidence with the slides and the monkey bars and all (the fourth was barely walking, and totally adorable), and you could really see the difference between how careful R was about walking up and down the steps and even letting the other kids go by.

Because I was sitting and watching (J was right there with R), I felt like I could really see what the day care teacher was talking about. In another twist, she's also refusing to go down slides. She walks right up to them, inches to the edge, then turns around and stands up and walks away.

22 months

Dear R,

Hoo boy. 22 months. Going on two. I'm trying not to look too far ahead in the future since I want to really revel in who you are right now, but I often can't help but keep thinking, "I can't believe my baby is almost two!"

A week or so ago you told your first "story." We were reading a colors book that we've read a million times. Each color has a double-page spread, with one picture per page of something that fits the color. I was trying to read each color in order. "Yellow! Yellow Cheese! Yellow Duckling!" but you were having none of it. You wanted to flip to the end and look at the brown page. I kept flipping back to the beginning after a second or two of looking at the brown page, in an attempt to try and make it a little further through the book. But no-- you kept flipping back to brown. I couldn't tell at first whether the book was just randomly opening to brown, or whether you were purposefully wanting to look at the brown page. But then you said, clear as day-- your father heard you from across the room-- "Goat eat brown bread."

So there you have it. During your 22nd month, you "read" your first story out of a book.

"Goat eat brown bread."

I'll never forget it.

We've had a whirlwind of travel and visitors this month. Both sets of grandparents came down to stay with us, and we went to visit both sets of grandparents. You are head over heels for all of your grandparents, and get so incredibly excited when they come or when you get to see them.

One of the highlights of this month was definitely being able to visit with and see you interact with your cousins Little Frog and G and Trucker. You and G spoke your own little secret language while hanging out in Ohio at Grandma and Grandpa's. During dinner, the two of you would frequently look at one another and just laugh and laugh. Of course, the rest of us would kind of look around, and then we'd get caught up in your laughter too and before long we'd all be laughing. We can't wait to get you together with all of your cousins again as soon as possible.

Love,
Mama

Bunny

We're very proud of this bunny that R made. When we went in to pick her up on the day that her day care class made these bunnies--about a month ago, maybe--her day care teacher was really excited to tell us that R was the first one to recognize that the brown cut-out shape was supposed to be a bunny, and yelled it out for everyone else to hear. Apparently, a bunch of the other kids thought it was a fish (which, actually, I can kind of see, given just a vague brown cut out). R, on the other hand, is also very proud of the carrot that she glued in the appropriate spot on the bunny's mouth.

Hunting for Easter Eggs

R and G had a great time hunting for Easter Eggs at Grandma and Grandpa's house this weekend. It was the cutest thing to watch them looking for the eggs together.

Visit with Great-Grandma

Where's Mommy?

J emailed me at work today to tell me that when he picked R up from day care today and brought her home, she started knocking on the basement door saying, "Mommy? Mommy?" because she could hear the laundry going.

Camel

R is starting to get more choosy about what she wears. Today when she was getting dressed, I broke out a shirt we got from my friend H shortly after R was born with a big pink camel on it and a cute pink top that she hasn't worn yet and asked R which shirt she wanted to wear. She went right for the camel, and was pretty excited about the shirt all day long. She kept saying camel, and pointing at her shirt. So excited!

When she got home from day care the shirt had some remnants of her lunch on it and then she fed herself a bowl of yogurt and bananas and made even more of a mess. By this point she really needed a new shirt.

But when we got upstairs she really did not want to take off the camel shirt. I have never experienced so much resistance at getting her undressed. She held on to that shirt for dear life, despite the fact that it had puddles of yogurt on it. I tried to entice her with all her other shirts.

Look, this one has a turtle! Oooh, what about this squirrel? Or, oh my GOODness, look at the leopard print!

Nothing deterred her. She WANTED that camel shirt, and she wanted to be wearing it.

Fortunately, I am bigger and stronger, so I won the battle of getting the shirt off. That didn't mean she wasn't really pissed off about it for, oh, 5 minutes. Then she wanted the leopard print shirt and was really happy afterwards.

Good grief.

Then I had to change her pants. This one was a little easier, as she got excited about her cat pajama pants right away.

I am pretty interested to see how her sense of style continues to develop. And sorry, no pictures of the camel shirt-- we'll try to catch some next time. It's a sweet shirt.

Painting

One of R's favorite things to do at daycare is paint. They are really great with breaking out the art supplies every day. She brings home 3-5 things a week, sometimes more, if they've had things displayed in the room for awhile that they just took down. She also brings home clothing liberally smeared with paint. (Hence the need for near-daily clothing changes! Fortunately all of the paint has washed out and we don't really have any stains on her things, not to mention that I only send her to day care in "play clothes" that I don't worry about very much).

Without further ado, here are two of her latest creations:

Ladybug
Red Paint With Sponge

Ketchup

Last night J and I took R to get some Indian food. It was a buffet chock-full of vegetarian options, MMMM.

The servers couldn't get enough of R. She was a total cutie the whole meal. They even brought out some plain chicken with some ketchup on a plate for her, I suppose in case she thought the buffet food was too spicy.

We let her have a teeny little bit of the chicken and she loved dipping it into the ketchup. Once she'd eaten that, she started picking up individual grains of rice and dipping those into the ketchup. It was the funniest thing to watch her daintily picking up single grains of rice and ever-so-carefully dipping them just a tiny little bit into the ketchup.

We finally took the plate away when she started dipping her fingers into the ketchup and licking it off.

Dog "Walking"

Even though the title of this post says dog walking, this was more like being walked by the dog. The eight of us went to a park near JW and C's house after lunch and at one point JW let R hold Bailey's leash. She loved it and proceeded to walk with him all around the grassy area, but really, he was the one leading the way. She just followed. It was adorable.

Visit to CT

We took a weekend trip up to CT last weekend and got to see C, JW, Little Frog, and Grammie and Grampie. We had an awesome lunch at this thai restaurant in Hartford, and got the waiter to take a picture of all of us. It's the first group shot we've gotten of all of us in a long time! (unfortunately, Little Frog turned her head at the last minute... oops!)
Then we went outside and took some more photographs. There was an interesting looking Japanese noodle restaurant across the street, so C went in to look at the menu and J and JW and Little Frog and me and R waited so we could get a good group shot of the six of us. J made me laugh hysterically, which got a chuckle or two out of Little Frog, too.Group Shot!And of course, grandparents with granddaughters... R was not too excited about more pictures so we had to make this one really quick.

Reading to Baby

In the mornings, when I get R ready for day care*, I often let her play by herself in the living room while I get all her stuff ready to take (like her lunch or extra clothes or anything like that). One morning, I found her holding her doll and a book, and trying to climb into her chair. I picked her up and put her into her chair and she proceeded to read to her doll, even taking the doll's hand to point to things on the page. So. Cute.*To be fair, I should note that J has been doing most of the morning wake ups with R.

Daffodils

In Texas, everyone takes pictures of their kids in the middle of fields of bluebonnets. Bluebonnets are few and far between here in Delaware, so we took pictures of R in the middle of a patch of daffodils, which are blooming everywhere.