ready for her close up!

I haven't taken any pictures in awhile so I pulled out the camera today and took some while she was playing outside.


Here's the close up....I think she's due for another haircut! Those bangs grow fast, just like Mommy's.

She finally learned how to climb into chairs by herself (and likes to do it over and over again).

Here she is getting ready to go down her new slide that she can climb herself (the one on her swingset is too big for her to do unless we put her up at the top and hold her hand to slide down).





But this is what she prefers to do on the slide:






And this is from a few weeks ago, when she decided to empty the basket of all of the books and climb in and out and in and out.

See the baby toys in the background? She LOVES to play in her bouncy seat. It was in the basement put away but made it's way back up to the family room because she crawls into it to read books! That yellow crib toy was for sale in my garage sale a few weeks ago and didn't sell, so she decided she wanted to start playing with it again.

dake ooo

What? You can't read that title? That's toddler-ese for "thank you!" (Well, my toddler, anyway.) She's starting to say it all the time now. She puts something in my hand and I say, "Thank you!" She then says, "Dake ooo!" Then she brings me something else and the whole way over to me she says, "dake ooo, dake ooo, dake ooo," until she puts it in my hand and I say, "thank you," again.

However, she also knows now that when you give her something she is supposed to say "dake ooo" too. She doesn't always do it, but sometimes she remembers. When I went to pick her up in the nursery today after church they told me that she said it when they gave her her snack, all on her own! Hooray! She's learning! Today Daddy gave her a bite of a cookie and she turned away and said, "dake ooo" to him without being reminded.

Today at the park she was picking up mulch (her favorite thing about the park, I think....forget about the playground equipment....she just wants mulch!) and taking it to various people, telling them "dake ooo" as she gave it to them. It was a riot for these total strangers to hold out their hands to receive a piece of mulch from my daughter! She's quite the sharer, my girl.

Speaking of sharing, she's good at it, except when it comes to Mommy, apparently. On Friday we went to the hospital to see my friend Christa and her new baby girl, Hannah. Our little one was excited to see the baby.....that is, until I picked the baby up to hold her. All of a sudden my little girl was green with envy and couldn't get my lap back in her possession fast enough. She didn't want to have anything to do with the baby after that--just Mommy.

But sharing mulch....she's a pro. Just don't ask her to share her Mommy.

(It's a good thing Mommy doesn't plan on having another little one for awhile!)

17 month stats

Height: 31 inches (50th percentile)...not too bad! Daddy's hoping she may be a basketball player yet!
Weight: 19 pounds (below the 3rd percentile)....yeah, I know...bummer. I SO wanted her to have made it to 20 pounds!!!!
Shoes: size 5 medium(I just took her to Stride Rite and had her sized....just thought I'd throw that in there!) She used to be a wide, which I couldn't believe, since I have always had super narrow feet. This time they told me she has narrow feet, but they're still kind of thick from top to bottom, so that makes up the narrowness and she can wear a medium. Let's hope that's always the case because I have always had trouble finding narrow shoes in my size.

The doctor told me to give her pediasure every day to try and up her calories. She also said it sounds like she's just too busy and distracted to take the time to sit down and eat. I'll say!

So there you go. My itty bitty girl is still itty bitty. Today she's wearing a sweater from last winter that is size 6-9 months, and it still fits!

the social butterfly

Today we went to toddler story time at the library for the first time. It's for ages 18 months to 3 years, and though she's only 17 months old, she's clearly too old for the baby laptime, which is infants through 18 months (there's no WAY she would sit in my lap), so I tried the toddler one, thinking they'd be used to little kids wandering around and not staying in a parents' laps. Well, there were all the other little boys and girls, sitting in their moms' laps, and then there was my little girl, becoming best friends with the librarian leading the story time, the mom sitting next to us, the little boy across the room, the big stuffed polar bear in the back of the room, and everyone in between. She wouldn't sit still for two seconds, except when the librarian was playing the guitar and singing a song. Even then she stood (but some other kids were standing too by that point, so that part wasn't so bad), but at least she was still. But as soon as the guitar was put away (and she realized that signing "more" wouldn't make him bring it out again and play a song just for her), she'd begin to wander to and fro, picking up the books around the room and carrying them over to me one by one, or up to the storyteller and putting them on his lap, or to the grandma across the room. She took someone's DVD from their stroller and brought that to me. She took someone's baseball cap and brought that to me. She went up to the felt board and picked up a felt balloon that had fallen off and handed it back to the storyteller (wow, isn't she helpful?). Oh my....she was "quite the social butterfly," as one mom leaned over and said to me.

Everyone was smiling and laughing at her; I'll have to admit that it was probably pretty funny to watch, if she wasn't my own, but as her mother, who is trying to teach her to be obedient, it was quite stressful and showed me that she has a LOOOOOOOONG way to go! Granted, she is only 17 months old and doesn't understand it yet if I say, "You need to sit and listen to the story or we're going to have to leave," but she'll have to learn it sometime. At what point, I wonder, will she start to understand? And how do I allow her to be her friendly little self and not squelch her love for people and yet get her to be a good listener in these types of settings? It's a good thing we've got a few years before school starts to practice all of these skills!!!

And while I'm at it asking questions, where in the world did she get this socialness???? It's CERTAINLY not from me! If you know me even a little bit, you know that I never have been and never will be a very social person. And though her daddy talks more than I do, he was always very quiet and shy around strangers growing up, he tells me. She doesn't know a stranger. Maybe it was all of that mexican food I craved while I was pregnant. Did all of the spice give her some extra spice??

I love my girl, full of sugar and spice and everything nice....I just need to get used to having a social butterfly as a daughter and realize that she's not me.

our little artist

Yesterday I went to MOPS (Mothers of Pre Schoolers) at a church nearby (not our church). It was nice to meet new people and to know my little one was being well taken care of in the nursery. They said she was having a great time every time someone would go check to see how the kids were doing. When I went to pick her up they gave me a piece of paper and said, "This is the picture she drew." It was a blank sheet of white paper with some tiny red dots down in the corner that she obviously had done by pressing a crayon on the paper over and over and over. They wrote her name up at the top. It's her very first work of art! I already have it hanging on the refrigerator and it will eventually go in her baby book.

The last two mornings she woke up crying. I've brought her downstairs and given her her cup of milk, which she drinks, and then instead of scrambling down to play like normal, she's started cuddling with me on my lap instead (she's never been much of a cuddler, so this is quite a pleasant surprise!!!). Yesterday I started singing to her and rocking her back and forth as she sat on my lap with her arms around me. As soon as I stopped, she sat up, signed "more" and rocked herself back and forth until I started again. Then she'd put her arms back around me and cuddle some more. She did the very same thing this morning. It's just the sweetest time! I wish I could bottle all of that sweetness up and let it out at the times when she's being so frustrating!!!

Her latest obsession is bubbles. Every once in awhile this summer I've pulled out the bubbles to play with outside. She gets so excited when she sees the little bucket. She tries at first to blow a bubble, but doesn't quite get the idea of how to do it, so then she proceeds to chew on the wands (one in each hand) for as long as I'll let her. I have to keep blowing bubbles, though. If I stop, she signs "more" over and over until I start blowing more. Now if we go outside without bringing the bubbles, she looks at me, puts her finger up to her mouth, and blows, as if asking, "Mommy, where are the bubbles? You know we're supposed to have them when we come out here!" She gets quite upset when I tell her we're all done with the bubbles and we'll play with them another day. She doesn't want to play anything else when we're out there if the bubbles are out, so I don't get them out every time.