Musical Episodes

So this last week we have had the plague of a cold. However, a few fun things happened. Most of them happened to be musical in nature.

Grace has always loved music. This week she learned to play the flute- well to blow into it and play one note. She use to put it in her mouth and suck or wail a high note to mimic playing. This week she got it and now she likes to walk around playing. She also understands the word "blow" now. She will blow on her food if we tell her it is hot.

In addition she had a dancing doll episode. A song came on the TV and she took her doll and shook it around saying "dan bebe, dan bebe." It was the cutest thing.

Lastly she has taken to pointing to the stroller and saying "ride." This week we did not brave the weather as chest colds can be tricky for a mom who gets asthma at the drop of a hat. So when she pointed to the stroller I drove her around the house. As "Life is a Highway" came on the radio, Grace had her feet on the steering wheel toy at the front of her stroller and the bottle in her mouth. It was so cute I had to videotape it. I not only got her "driving" with the radio blasting, but I also captured her stopping to kiss her baby and give her baby a bottle. Great video.

Words

My mother says I need to record the words that Grace is saying now. It amazes me how many words she tries. As far as I can count she knows at least 50 words now. The minimum amount of words that she learns per week is at least one per day. This week she learned: minty, mine, cheese, nose, Calvin, Moose and Lily. There are more, but those are the ones I recall at the moment. For a 17th month old I think this is pretty good.

She is also starting to talk to me about things in more than two words. Three words together seem to be the most in one sentence, however she can converse about bow-wow's for at least three babbling sentences. Today she told me " oh no bow-wow" and led me over to Lily (one of our dogs)who was sitting on one of her toys.

She also understands the concepts of mom, dad and baby in other creatures as well as other people. She talked in length about the bow-wow's in our Disney book ending by pointing at the Dalmatian pups and saying "baby bow-wow." The best conversation we had was yesterday after her bath when she walked over to the potty stickers and said "bow-wow Moose." This was exciting because she was pointing at the dogs on the sticker paper. So we talked about Lily and Moose and I gave her two bow-wow stickers that "looked" like them. Then she initiated a peek-a-boo game with the two stickers by saying"peek-boo Moose" and "peek-boo ily".

Boom-Boom

Today was a day! Nobody but Grace and me from 2-6. Wow, it was only four hours? I need to get out. At six Grandpa and Grandma showed up. Grace immediately made a bee line for them. She must have felt cooped up as much as I did. She still has the rattling cough though.

After a Nana fix she ran over to Grandpa. Boom boom was what she wanted to play. This is where Grandpa pretends to be an elephant and she rides on his back while he walks around on all fours saying "boom-boom boom-boom." I happened to have the camera near so I will have to learn to upload videos soon.

Today, not sure if it was the first time, she combined her love of imaginative play using babies with the Boom-boom game. She has loved to feed, wash, hug, kiss and carry her babies since she was very young. Today, she put three babies on Gramps' back and then proceeded to try to climb on herself. Then Babies and Grace all went for a ride on the elephant! Well, a baby fell off, but thank goodness the elephant has a quick trunk.

Potty Sticker Adventures

When Grace turned one I of course had a birthday party. At that party someone told me about how the Japanese train their babies to go in the potty right away. Curious, and a little excited about saving some diaper money, I checked it out. Now I am always one to experiment, so I thought I would try it. The first day she went pee in the big toilet. Eventually I got her a mini-potty and we were going in the mini potty 2-3 times a day some of them poopies (yah!).

When Grace started getting her incisors we went through a series of illnesses. I gave up the potty because it started to be a source of stress for Grace and the last thing I wanted was a potty phobic toddler. These last two weeks though we started the Potty Stickers Game and we were back up to 1-2 times a day.

So tonight we took our bath as usual. (Yes, I got in the habit of bathing with her since that was the only way I could get in a bath since hubby works nights and I haven't stopped) While in the tub Grace asked for a Nah (Nah=Horse). Thinking she wanted a book, I put her outside the tub so she could grab it for us. Instead she walked over to her sticker chart. So I told her to sit on the potty and I would get the stickers out. She did, requested a Dora sticker, or rather said "nina" and I complied then pulled her in to the tub. As I did so I saw a large pee in her potty. Ecstatic, I praised her and we finished our bath.

After the bath she was interested in her sticker chart so I told her to sit on the potty and I would get the stickers out. Yes, I'm easy, she gets to play with the stickers if she sits on the potty, but only gets to place it on the chart is she goes in the potty. I am consistent about this too. Well we talked about the stickers and she played and the got up and started over to her chart. Of course I'm thinking there's no way she peed again, but she did! So I helped her place another sticker on her chart. It was a great potty adventure. Funny what tickles you when you are a stay at home mom.

Manners

February 11, 2009

Today the thing I am impressed with, I'm so easily impressed with Grace, is her manners. She has been starting to say please and thank you. Today she said a bunch of pleases and thankyous. During lunch it was "cheese please" and "thank you mama." To be clear it was " eese peese" and "tank you mama," but I was still impressed.