Say Cheese!

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Here's a little video from last Saturday of Leah dancing, jumping forward, saying "there you are!" when she finds her camera, and then saying "cheese!" when she's trying to take a picture.

Jumping Jumping

Just a quick update to say that Leah has finally achieved something she's been working at for the last week or so: jumping off her step stool! She did this a few times today and was really excited.

Also, before now, she could only jump up and down, but now she can also jump forward over and over, 7 or 8 times in a row! Go Leah!

High Chair/Low Chair

I decided to go ahead and put Leah's high chair on the lowest height setting because she's been trying really hard lately to climb into it for mealtimes. Ever since I did this, it's been her favorite thing to play with. She loves to play on it and climb into it all by herself when it's time to eat. When I'm getting food ready, I say "ok, go get in your high chair, it's time to eat" and she runs over and hops into it. She thinks it's pretty cool to be able to get in and out all by herself. I just park her so she can see the TV and she sits and watches Sesame Street or Clifford while she eats and she really enjoys herself.

Staycation

We had a great staycation (stay-at-home-vacation) and our little family bond has grown even stronger in these last two weeks. During the last three months, John's work and travel schedule has been pretty relentless and he hasn't been home much, so this was a much needed break for him and it was really nice to have him home for a change.  Leah gets noticeably happier when the three of us are hanging out together, and she was just thrilled to bits having us both around 24/7 day after day. It was like a never-ending weekend.

Leah has become so lovey-dovey and affectionate lately.  Without any prompting, she runs over to us and gives us tight hugs and sloppy kisses all the time. In restaurants, she often grabs our arm (whoever is sitting next to her), pulls us toward her, and gives our arm a really long hug and a kiss. What a sweetie!

Other new things she's doing lately:

Running around in a deliberately silly and exaggerated fashion when she's really happy. Stomping and pounding her feet, running in place, or stomping one foot as she walks, just because.

Making animal sounds. She does this all day long every chance she gets! She's still crazy about dogs and cats, and points them out wherever she sees them, saying "doggie!.......woo hoo ooo", "cat!......maah, maah, maah". I've even heard her do this in her sleep! She has also starting making the sounds for sheep, bear and duck. She has even started crawling around on her hands and knees pretending to be a dog....going "woo woo hoo".

Saying "Hi!" and "Bye bye" and waving.  She says these very clearly and enthusiastically. When I walk into the room, she says "Oh Hi!" in her cute high voice.

Shaking her head "yes" and "no". She has even started shaking her head "no" when I start singing to her. We have a whole repertoire of silly made-up songs in Dutch that we sing to her all the time (which she used to love), and sometimes I start singing and she shakes her head no for each one and makes noises like, "uh-uh-uh-uh, hey stop that". So she won't let me finish any of my songs! Well, can you blame her? But there is one song that she demands all the time, and that's the one that Beppe taught her in Dutch. She loves that song and pounds on her head when she wants to hear that song because that's one of the hand gestures in the song. When she does let me finish a song, she claps enthusiastically at the end of it.

Speaking of clapping, when she sees people clapping or cheering on tv, she always imitates it. If people have their arms in the air, she does that, too. She also loves waving her arms around imitating the orchestra conductor when she is watching one of John's classical music dvd's.

Twirling. She loves to twirl, and when we say the word twirling, she starts twirling. She even starts twirling on her own a lot and asks "Dis?" as if she's asking "what's this called?" When we say dancing, she starts dancing, and when we say jumping, she starts jumping. It can be quite entertaining!

Pointing to all her body parts. She is getting really good at pointing these out accurately when we ask" Where's Leah's.....".  I have to get this on video soon. So far, she can point out her head, hair, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, teeth, tongue, cheeks, tummy, belly button, arm, leg, foot, toes, fingers and thumbs.

Holding out her counting fingers when we ask "How many.......are there?". We've been working on counting for a long time, and started showing her how to count on her fingers. Beppe got her a really great book for counting animals, and she loves it. She brings it to us all the time to read to her and always holds out her fingers like she's trying to count.

Blowing bubbles in the bathtub. She loves laying on her stomach in the bathtub, blowing bubbles in the water, and dunking her ears in the water. She also makes swimming and kicking movements. I think we'll definitely need to sign her up for baby swim classes soon since she loves the water.

Learning so much. It seems like her receptive language skills are just taking off lately. She learns new words so quickly. We label and name things all the time for her, especially since she's always asking "Dis?" "Dat?" over and over again. When we're looking at a book or magazine or something, we only have to say a word a few times and then when we ask "Where's the.....?", she can accurately point to the object. She can follow simple directions, too, like Go show Daddy, Go give that to Daddy, Come here, Stand up, Sit down, Give Mommy/Daddy a kiss/hug, Go get your teddy bear/doggie, Give your teddy bear/doggie a kiss/hug, etc. She can pick words out of conversation and point to things that we're talking about.

Speaking funny jibberish. Her babbling has become very interesting and entertaining lately. There's definite rhythm and pattern to her sounds. She is so expressive and vocal. We love how she's always "ooohing" and "aaaahing" about everything. Plus when she takes a first bite of something she likes, she goes "mmmmmm!".  And she has started making really funny, new sounds which always cracks us up. She speaks to us like she's conversing. We just answer back and pretend along with her. It's really cute. We can't wait until she can start putting words together. It will be so fun to hear what she has to say.

Pretending. She puts her doggie/teddy bear to bed and covers them in a blanket and says night night or bye bye. Plus, she tries to brush and floss their teeth. I got her a new electric toothbrush recently for her, which she likes a lot better than a regular toothbrush. She has even started cooperating with having her teeth brushed now that we have this new toothbrush. So when I'm done doing her teeth, I sometimes let her play with it, and she tries to use it on her stuffed animals. How cute is that?

Her own little desk

The other night while we were getting ready for bed, Leah cleverly re-purposed some stacking, nesting tables into her own little desk. She did this all by herself. I had these rounded nesting cubes sitting in the corner of our bedroom for no apparent reason, and sometimes she liked to climb on them. These little tables have been moved all around the house and I never know what to do with them. Well, Leah had a great idea. She decided to pull out the smallest of the cubes and use it as a stool and sit there like it's a little desk. It fits her just perfectly, and she can even rest her feet on the other cubes. So now when we're in there getting ready in the morning and at night, she likes to bring her books up to it and sit there and read. It looks so comfortable!

Labor Day weekend

Over the long Labor Day weekend, there was a lot going on in our neighboring town of Hudson, so we ended up hanging out there both Sunday and Monday for their annual Taste of Hudson event. Not only was there a lot of food, there were also a lot of info booths and vendors and other things going on. So we gravitated toward the little kids area to give Leah a chance to play at the Little Tikes Land and to find out about Kindermusik classes and other services.

Leah just loved trying out all of the little houses, huts, swingsets, cars, basketball hoops, sandboxes and tables that were just her size.






We ended up spending most of our time there, just letting her play. She got to play with crayons and scribble for the first time. She didn't know how to hold the crayons, and every time we'd try to help her or show her what to do, she'd make it clear she wanted to do it herself! She ended up putting them in her mouth and trying to bite them, so it might be a little too early for an art project.




She also had a lot of fun playing with sand. After finding out that sand isn't edible, she had a great time scooping it and pouring it.



We put her in one of the Little Tikes cars and she really enjoyed moving it around and playing with the steering wheel and honking the little horn.



One of the ladies representing Little Tikes said she thought Leah was so cute and just loved watching her running around playing with all the toys and sitting in the little car. So cute that she actually gave us the little car for FREE! She said they donate all the equipment at the end of the event, and decided Leah should take it home and have fun with it because she was just the right age for it and seemed to really enjoy it. It was such a nice surprise and we couldn't believe it.



So now instead of going around the neighborhood in her stroller, something we started doing lately now that the weather is getting nicer, she'll now get to go for rides in her new little car.

We also picked up some info about Kindermusik classes, since we've been interested in something like this but haven't decided where to go yet. I put my name in for their raffle and just found out that I was the winner! We'll get a nice gift basket, plus $100 off their fall tuition. So that makes our decision easy. We'll start next week and I can't wait to see what Leah thinks of music classes since she really responds to music and dance. Plus, it'll just be another nice way to get out of the house and meet other moms and kids.

We went back to the Taste of Hudson on Labor day, too. And this time some random lady thought Leah was so cute that she gave her her son's balloon. I tied it to Leah's belt loop and she had so much fun running around with it.




She also got to play with another sandbox and some other equipment by Step2 this time, although we never quite made it over to the big Step2 play area since it started to rain before we could get there. Who knows what freebies Leah would have gotten over there!

Fun with cutlery

Leah has decided lately that she needs to have her own dishes and cups and silverware. Previously, I had been just putting her food on the sectioned tray that comes on the highchair, and I had one plastic suction-bottomed bowl I would give her. But all of the sudden, she decided she not only wanted the contents of my plates, bowls, silverware and glasses, but the very plates, bowls, silverware and glasses themselves. For a day or so, I even let her have them. She loved eating off of a real plate with real silverware and drinking out of a real glass. Don't worry, no dishes or babies were harmed in the process. So after that, I decided to go out and get her some of her own stuff. She loves playing with them, stirring the spoon and fork in the cups, and spends most of her mealtime playing with everything and sorting her food.

Kissing and Flossing and Brushing

These days, when we say "can you give mama/papa a kiss?", she'll give us a sweet kiss on the cheek or on the mouth, along with the sound effect "mwah, mwah". When she's playing with her Little People figures, she'll also have them kissing each other. It's so fun now that she's at the stage where she understands and can respond to things we say. I'll say, "go give that to papa', "go find papa" or something like that, and she'll run over to him.

Whenever I'm flossing my teeth, I always have to get an extra piece or two for Leah and it becomes a big sit-down affair. She loves to pretend to floss her teeth and started this quite a while ago, actually. But nowadays, the funny thing is, is that she tries to floss our teeth, too. We sit down on the floor, and she goes right up to us and is in there with both hands trying to floss, quite determined to figure out what she's supposed to be doing. It's cute because she'll be in our mouths looking really serious,but then look up and give us a big smile.

She definitely does not like getting her teeth brushed, however, and would prefer to be the one brushing our teeth. It's always a struggle, even with the two of us holding her down. But with almost a full set of teeth, there's no way around it. Pretty soon, I'll bring her in to see a pediatric dentist for a quick check to see how her teeth are doing and how well we're doing with the toothbrushing.

She can accurately point out all kinds of things now, when we say "where are your......?" So, when asked, she points to her nose, toes, eyes, mouth, tongue, teeth, fingers, hair, belly button. We're still working on finding her ears, though.

Weekend update

This weekend, Leah and I are on our own since John is super busy at work and spending the whole weekend at the office. Poor John! So yesterday, after a really messy lunch that required a bath,



then a long nap in the car, I took her to the playground. Well, she zonked out the minute I pulled into the playground parking lot. Fortunately, the weather was mild and breezy so I could just keep the windows open and read while she slept for an hour and a half. It was a nice break for me. After she woke up refreshed, it was time to play. She loved the swings, going down the slides, and running around the big-kid ramps. She's very social and likes to go up and stand next to other kids and smile at everyone.







She's just a sponge these days, learning so much and doing new things all the time. It's so fun to teach her things and watch her grasp them. I forgot to mention in the last post that she's starting to shake her head "yes" and "no". So I'll ask her questions a lot, and she'll nod her head. Mostly "yes" at this point, which is cool. She also vocalizes a lot when being asked a question, as if she's conversing. I've been trying to teach her some baby signs. So at the playground, she started putting her hand up to her mouth and acting as if she's eating. I said "oh, are you hungry?" and she nodded "yes". "Do you want to go home and eat now?" and she nodded "yes". I had some snacks and crackers with me, of course, but it was great because she didn't even make a fuss getting back into the car seat this time.

Getting her into the car seat. That's been one of my new challenges lately. For a while there, she was great. But she does not like being strapped into the car seat anymore. Or the high chair for that matter. This started a few weeks ago, probably because the car was getting so hot in the summer sun when we've been out shopping, and she doesn't want to get back in. So I always turn on the car and blast the AC first. She arches her back and practically does a back bend and then twists around and stands up facing the front of the car and wants to stand there and play instead. She would love to explore the entire car if she could. Eventually, I have to force her in, and she's not happy about it. To make things easier, I raised the height of the shoulder straps since they've been the same height since we got her. That already makes things easier. And now every time I take her out of the car seat, I make the shoulder straps really loose, so when I put her back in, it's a lot easier to get them buckled even while she's twisting and arching. Then once she realizes she's caught, it's a matter of just adjusting the straps.

She's learning body parts and can point to things when I ask "where's Leah's nose?", she points to her nose. "Where's Leah's hair?", she runs her fingers through her hair. "Where's mama's hair?" She touches my hair. "Where are Leah's toes?, she points to her toes. She also knows eyes and mouth. She loves to comb her hair and my hair all the time. She also knows a lot of other things, and when I ask, where's this? where's that?, she either points or just looks at it.

She can stack 5, sometimes 6, wooden blocks by herself. She loves playing with the blocks, and she loves to stack them and notice the little pictures on them. When they fall over, "Uh-oh!". She can do the ring stacker in the right order now. And she can do the shape sorters by herself, too. She loves to play with her new little Fisher Price piggy bank and mail box also. She puts the coins or letters in the slot and takes everything out and starts over again. And we got her the little corn popper, too, which she loves to push and pull.






She's also starting to imitate some animal sounds. So when I say, "what does a cat say?" She says a really quiet "maw, maw, maw". "and what does a dog say?" and she makes a funny grunting sound. I have to go out and get her something with the animal sounds, because she's really catching on.

And just as I have guided her fingers to show her how her toys work, she has started to grab my hand and use my fingers to push the buttons on her electronic toys.

She says "dada" and "papa" all the time now while playing and babbling, especially when she's playing with her toy house. I always show her how papa comes in the front door and says "Papa's home", and how guests come over and ring the doorbell and sit at the table. It's really cute to watch her play pretend.

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And she's started calling out "Ma!" really loudly to get my attention. She is also saying "mama" when she babbles, but I think she's decided to call me "Ma". It's kind of like "Om-ma" in Korean, where the strong emphasis is on the second syllable. She definitely knows who her mama and dada are.

Playing catch-up

I feel like I haven't been that good about keeping up with my blog lately. I've had other things to take care of, plus Leah's just been getting into everything and has been keeping me pretty busy these days, so I've been going to bed when Leah goes to bed. And since the only time I can sit behind the computer undisturbed is in the middle of the night, I've been just too pooped to blog lately. I've barely even had time to figure out this awesome new Macbook we got recently! And that's also partly the problem. I've had to spend some time transferring things over from the old computer to this new one, while getting up to speed with how iPhoto and Mobile Me works. Plus, I was running out of space for photos on Picasa and had to start a new account. So, anyway, it's in the middle of the night but I've had some coffee, so here goes nothing.....

Ever since we said goodbye to the ducky tub (which is now a fun toy to play with in her room), Leah has been having so much fun during her baths. She has always enjoyed bath time in her ducky tub, but now we've taken it to whole 'nother level. She loves her new Boon Flo faucet protector since it creates a cool waterfall effect and is very interesting to look at and play with, and I like it because it keeps her from hitting her head on the sharp faucet fixture, plus she can't take it off no matter how hard she tries. She loves to open up her mouth and drink the water and stick her hand in it while the water's running.






She really loves having the whole tub to run around in now. She stomps her feet, dances and twirls around because she's having so much fun. It's really hard getting her out of the tub. She'd stay in there forever if she could. Even after I've drained the water out, she still loves to play for a while and I have to be creative in coaxing her out of the tub.

She has become quite the little monkey lately. She's just climbing everything in sight. A while ago, we had to move the couch away from the wall because she was able to stand up on the back of the couch and hike her leg up on the ledge between the kitchen and family room. Nowadays, she has started to stand up on the back of the couch without any support. I'll hear her laughing or doing something to get my attention while I'm in the kitchen, and when I look over, there she is, standing up on the back of the couch smiling at me, teasing me. Now, I have to be really careful and pretend not to react while I walk over to her because she thinks it's really funny and will start laughing hysterically and dive back onto the couch shrieking and giggling. It's a bit nerve-wracking, but fortunately, our couch is not that high off the ground and we have carpeting.




She's also decided that the musical table is a lot more fun to play with when you're standing on top of it. I'll be doing something in the kitchen and will hear the table sounds thinking she's just playing with the table, and then I'll look over and there she is, standing on it making all those sounds with her feet.





I've had to rearrange the upstairs furniture again because she was climbing off the arm of the the glider chair and trying to get on top of the dresser. And now that the chair is back in her room again, she's constantly trying to push up the seat cushion and stand on the metal seat frame, which I really had to put a stop to since it's so dangerous.



She's also started to climb on the subwoofer downstairs to try to get onto the TV console. She's always been fascinated with our TV and really wants to touch it, so I'll have to do some rearranging again to make sure I don't find her one day with her face pressed up against the TV, drooling all over it.

In the kitchen, she loves hauling things out of the pantry and the fridge. We've decided it's just too hard keeping her out of there since she makes a mad dash every time she sees them open, so the lower shelves are full of things that are ok for her to play with. And she's also finally trying to get the kitchen cabinet doors open. There are a few single cabinets that we can't use a sliding lock on, so I've basically just given those over to her. It does mean that she's making a huge mess wherever she goes now and I'm spending a lot of time picking up after her.




The other day, I took her to another library to play in the children's section. This library had a lot of toys and puzzles to play with and the other kids there had fun with her. They thought she was so cute. She also had a lot of fun looking at the magazines and books, pulling things off the shelves, and so I just basically followed behind her putting things back where they belonged. She had so much fun, she didn't want to leave, so we'll be back soon. I'm going to start taking her to story hour at the library. Plus, I'm going to sign her up for a music and movement class this fall.



This weekend, we decided to hit some museums. Yesterday, we took her to the Natural History Museum and she actually got really into it. She loved looking at the animals and the other exhibits, and was wide-eyed and gasping and pointing at everything. She loved running around and was really taking everything in. We thought it was pretty neat that we could take a 13 month old to that kind of museum and have her actually get something out of it.



And today, we took her back to the Children's Museum and she really enjoyed herself again. In the little "grocery store", it was so cute watching her push her little shopping cart around, picking items off shelves and putting them in her shopping cart.




Other things she's been doing lately...

Getting all her teeth in.....canine teeth and first molars are all coming in. She's drooling like crazy these days and must be having a lot of discomfort. Poor thing!

Clapping her hands and smiling when she sees people on TV applauding (yes, we're probably watching too much TV).

Making phone calls. Beware! You may be next! Our new phones somehow make it easy for her to get into our phone directory. She used to play with our old phones and never managed to do this. But she's already called Beppe (John's mom) a few times, babbling into the phone. But Beppe didn't mind! She's also figured out how to leave voice memos on our phone that play on our answering machine. (I had to look in the user manual to figure this out). So we now have 3 really adorable little messages from her that we can't erase. And she just loves to listen to them. She knows they're of her, and she listens intently and giggles and thinks they're really funny.

Falling asleep in her high chair. She gets really drowsy while eating lunch and will sometimes zonk out for a whole hour and a half. Funny thing is that when she wakes up, she resumes eating like nothing happened.





Saying Uh-Oh! She started this about 10 days ago, and now she says it all the time when she (deliberately) drops something.

Pointing out dogs, cats and ducks everywhere. Whether it's on TV, or in a book or magazine, or on something in a store, she's still obsessed with dogs and cats. She sees them everywhere when we're out in a store. She shouts "dog" "cat" over and over, and when I look around to find what she's looking at, sure enough, way off in the distance, or on a greeting card or magazine or on some product, she'll see dogs and cats. When I strolled her through the pet supply aisles of Target, she was so excited, she couldn't believe her eyes! So many dogs and cats! We've taken her to a few pet stores lately just to look at the animals there. And the first words out of her mouth every morning are still "dog" and "cat". But today, it was Uh-Oh!

Splish! Splash!

Over the weekend, Leah tried out her new baby pool and the cutest little splash pool and they were a huge hit. She hopped right into the baby pool while it was filling with water. But that pool was soon forgotten (good thing it only cost 3 bucks) once she saw us getting her new splash pool ready.



I bought it last week and almost returned it after I read from some customer reviews that the water never has a chance to heat up and some babies don't like playing in the cold water. But Leah just loved it. She was so fascinated by all the streams of water shooting into the air and was trying to touch each one. She was giggling and stomping around in the water and thought it was the coolest thing.







After we turned off the water, she went back and forth between running around on the grass, kicking the ball around, playing in the pool, and climbing up and down the deck steps.








Well, then it was getting late and time for dinner, so we eventually had to drag her inside and she was not happy about that! She zonked out while eating....something she has been doing a lot of lately! But she got to play in it again on Sunday and had just as much fun.



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