tawbubby

Amelia and I made hand puppets yesterday. Mine was named Clementine and her’s was Apple-Apple. Lucky Apple-Apple got to eat a Sweet Tart.

Daphne doesn’t hesitate to walk anywhere anymore. Most of the time if she chooses to walk along the walls, she realizes it’s a lot easier if she lets go.

Daphne walked up and down the upstairs hallway probably a dozen times tonight. For your viewing pleasure:
Video 1 (click on each)
Video 2
Video 3
The second has Amelia helping her. Amelia has been a big part of Daphne learning to walk and you can hear how Daphne enjoys it.

She got her first walking BONK! on Thursday. She fell against the window sill and got a nice lump on the bridge of her nose. Her teacher wasn’t there when Daphne arrived at daycare on Friday. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was different about Daphne so the bonk wasn’t that bad I guess. I thought she looked like a Klingon. Today she has yellowish bruise clearing from the sides of the bridge of her nose.
Tonight she marched and lift her knees really high. She also learned Ring Around the Rosie today. Of course, she loves the fall down part.

Daphne is officially walking today.  She was the most capable cruiser for a long time, but today she learned to let go.  I picked her up from her classroom, and then we went to Yellow Room to get Amelia.  I asked Amelia to go a few steps from Daphne so that Daphne could walk to her.  Daphne did, then all the other Yellow Room kids also wanted Daphne to talk to them.  She walked to each kid, 6 or 8 steps between them, gave each a hug, then went on to the next (after a “Daphne can you walk to…” prompt with pointing to the target).  She walked to 6 or 7 kids and the teacher without plopping back down or going to the furniture.  It was so sweet on both sides and a great way to become a walker.

Here’s a not too great video of her walking to me at our friend’s house tonight.  You get the gist of it here, but imagine a bunch of kids in the room and her visiting each one.

Daphne walking (click)
Ethan is out of town for a few more days, and she will probably be a pretty professional walker when he gets back!

The shirt says it all (“attention getter” if you can’t read it.)

Daphne had me laughing for probably 10 minutes this afternoon. She loved wearing those very long beads (thanks Aunt Mel!) and was mostly having her own party by shaking music toys or blowing on the saxo-flute.  A lot of the time she really looked like a party girl with her WILD hair.  She pulled her ponytail holder out and her hair was standing up straight from static.  I laughed hard when she put the butterfly net over her head and didn’t first take a toy out of it. Then she kept switching between two butterfly net hats. She was definitely hamming it up for her audience.

She’s taking up to 8 or 9 steps on her own now, to get from one person to another.  She doesn’t let go to walk for toys yet.  Almost there…

Amelia sat there reading books to Elmo on Saturday morning for probably 45 minutes.

She wants to read. We’re slowly working on recognizing some small words, spelling, recognizing upper vs. lowercase letters, and repeating elements in stories.

Her three constant companions these days are: Elmo (“I love Elmo so much”), Treasured Tales (a book of classics that Uncle Michael gave her for her first Christmas), and a giant lip balm.  She takes them all around the house and to bed every night.
Amelia asked me on Sunday “Do you want me to draw a cat?” I said “Sure!” I was pretty impressed by this drawing.

I’ve seen whiskers on circles in a few drawings recently, in retrospect.
She didn’t feel too well Saturday night and was very tired the rest of the weekend. We found this on Sunday after lunch- Amelia realllllly wanted to go nap. And did for 3 hours.

She’s o.k. today.

Daphne had her 18 month checkup today. She’s 28.5 pounds, and my back knows it. Tolerated her shots pretty well. She said a very good “butterfly” word for the doctor when she looked at the painted one on the exam room wall. That was very impressive, we both recognized it. I never heard that one before- though she hears it from me every time we pass the butterfly on her bedroom door! The doctor asked me “How long has she been walking?”. He saw her very proficient and speedy cruising, but she doesn’t yet let go. Soon…she look 3-4 steps a bunch of times yesterday. Tonight she didn’t want to do that even once, she just wanted to go to bed. Maybe she has what Amelia had over the weekend.

She has an evaluation of eligibility for speech therapy on Thursday.  Maybe I shouldn’t tell them she said “butterfly”?  Really, she has words that are waiting to come out.  She just doesn’t know how to move her mouth to say them.  We’ll see.

The little girl getting big! And getting into big Trouble! I was helping Amelia in the bathroom and when I got back to Daphne, I found this.  She walked over with her cart and climbed up by herself.

And then this! She was standing, singing and rocking on her rocking chair.

Crazy girl didn’t fall and I let her do it all she wanted because it is probably really good for her stability.  Earlier she tried to get off Amelia’s bed by crawling backwards onto her side table. 

She learned to say the ”b” sound yesterday.  Before that, she had only said a handful of “B”s.  When I picked her up tonight, she said a real “bye-bye” to her class several times and back and forth with me at least 10 times.  And “ball”, and “bath”, but not quite “belly button”.  It was pretty amazing.  It seems she knows a lot of words and is just waiting for her mouth skills to catch up.  And the B words are, um, Bursting out of her tonight.  “Bebe” is next!

Ethan made some election ballots with Amelia last night. He chose the categories and she selected the candidates, and then picked her favorite.

The winners: Old Maid, Mama, Purple, Elmo, Sheep, Grilled Cheese and Carmine.

Click the image for larger, color versions).

Ethan here. The scribbles on the last one are when Amelia turned the game on me. She asked me my favorite animal. I told her, “dinosaur” and she wrote a D, looked up in Perfect Objective Note Taker mode and asked me me, “What else?” It was incredibly cute. If I threw her for a loop (“Platypus”) she would ask me how the word starts (“What starts with ‘platypus’?”). I’d tell her, then she’d write a “P”. You may be able to find a G for giraffe. She threw in some extra A’s because she’s been writing her name a lot lately.

So that last ballot is all of her note-taking for the 7-8 animals I named as contenders. the whole thing was a perfect mimicry of the game we had played, but with reversed roles.

We had breakfast out as a family this morning, first time since before Daphne was born. A treat!

Amelia and Daphne both had the Funny Face, a large chocolate batter pancake with a whipped cream smile and chocolate chips.

This was Amelia’s when she was done:

This was Daphne’s when we cut her off: