G’n'R Out West

It seems like she is all grown up….sigh.  She is in that sponge mode, seems like every day there is something new.  It is really fun.

She is so loving and wonderful.  Our girl loves daycare and  has really settled in.  She will reach for her teachers when we walk in the room, and she hardly ever says goodbye to us, as she has too many other things to take care of to worry about her parents.  At the end of the day, I usually see her before she sees me, so I get to watch her secretly at daycare for just a few minutes.  When she does finally notice me she gets so excited that whatever is in her hand gets thrown across the room, and she comes running, chanting ‘mama mama mama’.  I don’t think life gets any better than that. 

…but like anything, there are exceptions:
1)  If she is eating a treat when I come to get her, she is initially excited to see me, but she ensures that she gets every last crumb of her treat into her mouth before running over.  She eats it frantically though, and I can tell that she is torn between eating the treat, and having a hug.   One of life’s complicated dilemmas.
2) If I take her to daycare before 8am: If I take her to daycare before 8 am she has to hang out in the 19 months + room until 8am. She is also in this room after 4pm.  In the afternoon, she is perfectly happy in the room.  Before 8 she usually cries when I drop her off.  She cries even if her regular daycare worker is there.  They know she is like this now, and if I do drop her off before 8 they usually take her into her regular room with a few other kids and she is perfectly happy with any of the daycare workers in there.  I am grateful that they are so accommodating. 

Sleep:
The first half of the month sucked because she wasn’t sleeping well and she was grumpy all day and she looked terrible.  I got all stressed out about it…and just when I started to get stressed, she started teething, then got the flu…all the while sleeping 15 hours a day.  It is ridiculous.  Anyway, the last week we are back to normal, mostly sleeping through the night, but Greg and I are lucky to get the occasional night time snuggler in our bed.  The last few times she’s come to bed with us, she has slept really well.   

Napping is still going great – we are so fortunate to have such a great sleeper. 

Eating:
She is either eating everything in site, or we are having a food stand off.   Or that is how it seems these days.  One day she will refuse to eat our meal, so she will eat nothing until bedtime snack.  The next night we will offer her something we know she will like (because we don’t feel like another battle), and Greg and I will have leftovers of the meal she refused the night before.  Of course, that is when she will eat her meal and then beg us for what she turned her nose up at just the night before.  Sometimes I get so irritated.  I know most parents have much worse food battles, so I know that I am lucky, but that doesn’t console me when I feel like she is doing something just to watch my reaction.  Last week we had our friend Reema over for dinner.  Adelle asked Reema for her carrots, Reema obliged and Adelle ate carrot after carrot.  I can not even remember the last time I was able to get that kid to eat a carrot…arg.

Getting Around:
She is the boss of everything at her level.  This month she has slowly started to tackle climbing.  She isn’t too adventurous (lucky for us), but she can sometimes climb up onto the rocking chair by herself.  She will also stand on her little stool, or her little ride on toy and look at us as proud as she can be. 

Hair:
Way too much of it…and I have no clue what to do about it, or with it.

Eyes:
Mostly brown…sometimes green.

Language:
She knows tons of words now.  Her favorite is owl.  She must love the way it feels in her mouth when she says it.  You can tell she enjoys it when she says it.  Last night Greg said a bad word and she imitated the intonation…but not the word thankfully.  We have to clean up our act around home if we don’t want her saying certain words that on occasion slip out of our mouths!!!

We were at a friends house the other day and they noticed that most of Adelle’s words were B words.  They said one of their children was like this as well.  It is funny, when you think about it.   Although she does have a number of non B words, most of them do start with B and mostly they sound alike.  That is, if you don’t have the finely tuned ear of a parent and a little context to rely on. 

The one funny word that is a B word, but she doesn’t even attempt to say properly, is bird. She still says ‘ga’ no matter how many times we say bird to her.  We say bird and she repeats ga quickly and looks at us all proudly like as if she just replicated the word we’d said exactly.  Interesting.

Personality:
She has had a bit of a hard month with being sick and teething.  But she is usually a joy to be around.  She makes us laugh everyday.  She loves to talk to us and she will often join in if we are laughing at a joke. 

One of her favorite passtimes these days going through her baby book.  There is a picture in it of her kissing our friend’s dog.  It is her favorite picture in the whole book.  She will ask us to get the book out and then wait VERY impatiently as we flip to her favorite page.  Then she’ll woof for a while while she enjoys her favorite picture.  I think I’m going to make her her very own picture book with family, friends, and of course, her beloved dogs. 

Stuff that happened this month:
- she got 3 of her one year molars (but is still missing on of her bottom front teeth
- she started to growl when you get impatient
- she developed a passion for putting things back..I’m hoping this one sticks with her for a while

Adelle shows us her FAVORITE Christmas decoration, a ‘ga’ as she calls it.  Adelle is quite interested in the tree, but also very careful.  She thinks gifts are really great.  She even opened one while we weren’t paying much attention…luckily for me, it was one of mine….thanks for the socks Ron and Fran!
 

Our little naked baby, she requested her clothes ‘off-off’ yesterday