1. Fish Food: Reese loves to feed the fish in our pond. A few weeks ago I asked her if she wanted to feed the fish. She immediately sprang up and starting running down the hall. I remembered that I had left the fish food outside over night, so I headed for the back door. Reese, however, ran straight for the pantry and started banging on the door. She remembered that the fish food is usually stored in the pantry. She didn't understand my explanation about why the fish food wasn't in the pantry, so I had to drag her kicking and screaming outside. When she saw the fish food on the table, she quieted immediately and went over to grab it. She knows not to approach the pond, and will sit on the deck and watch the fish while I pour in the food.
2. New words: Reese has added a few new words to her vocabulary. Sometimes they're hard to decipher, but since I'm around her all the time I can tell that she uses them intentionally and consistently. Her vocabulary now includes: dog (/d-ah/), Dada, up, down (/d-ah-w/), mama, ball (/b-ah/), bow, no, yes, and pumpkin (/bum-bum/). She doesn't attempt the word cat anymore, but continues to make a "meowing" sound when she sees them.
3. Teeth: Reese now has 7 teeth. Four on top and three on bottom. She's never had one tooth come in on it's own, so I suspect number 8 may not be far behind.
4. Motor Skills: While visiting Grandma and Grandpa Righter (while our kitchen was under going construction), Reese learned how to squeeze. Grandpa Righter demonstrated with a small "stress ball." At first Reese's imitation included lots of eye squinting and shaking, but she didn't really squeeze anything--she was putting in a whole lot of effort, though. Now, she not only makes the face that conveys she's attempting a great feat, but she does in fact squeeze objects between her hands. Reese has also learned how to blink. After seeing pictures of eyes in one of her books, I showed her how to blink. She immediately imitated me--kind of. What fun is blinking if your eyes are ALL the way closed? When Reese blinks, she keeps her eyes open a tiny bit at the bottom so she can tilt her head back and still see what's going on. Reese is also becoming quite the master with stairs. At the park, she now uses the handrail to go up and down the stairs without crawling or sitting. When she gets to a "big step," she'll sit down, swing her legs over the edge and ease herself down if there's not a rail near by. She's also mastered going across the wobbly bridge at the park (by herself by holding on to the rail), as well as sitting on the tire swing or "big kid" swings while holding on to the chains. She's also refusing help on the slides--she'll go down on her bottom or her belly (face first and feet first) without help. (And if you try to help her, she usually gets upset.) Unfortunately, Reese has also mastered throwing. Kevin pointed out that I shouldn't get upset that she throws everything--we do praise her when she throws the ball, how's she supposed to discriminate between balls and other objects? It does make going to the grocery store hard, though. She used to sit in the cart and carefully inspect items we were buying on our trip, now she likes to throw anything I hand her on the ground. Sorry for the bruised produce and dented cans HEB.
5. Naps: It's back to two naps again--at least for this week. It's any one's guess what Reese will do sleep-wise on any given day. It's making planning anything difficult. It's also difficult on mommy, because on two nap days she's up promptly at 6 o'clock or 6:05AM. (Occasionally 5:45AM, just for fun also.) I may start drinking coffee after all.
6. Now when Reese is hungry, she goes to her high chair and reaches up toward the seat. When she wants to go to the park she goes to her stroller and tries to climb in.
7. Elephant: We've had a couple of elephant issues lately. They're all due to Reese's improving memory and observation skills coupled with mommy's lack of attention to detail.
* About three weeks ago I tried to distract Reese from an inappropriate toy in her room (the diaper pail) by asking her where Elephant went. I knew Elephant was laying in the living room and our hunt for him would take us away from the diaper pail. Without hesitation, Reese looked at me, went over to the closet in her room and banged on the door. I opened the closet and Reese pointed quickly to the "hiding" spot I had selected for the spare Elephant. What could I do besides give it to her? She had indeed found Elephant--just not the one I had in mind. I immediately dashed to the living room, got the duplicate Elephant and put him in the bottom of a laundry basket....which leads to elephant story #2.
* Earlier this week, one of the Elephants went through the wash. (I trade them out at least weekly for a good washing if they don't fall victim to some kind of mess in the mean time.) I was extra careful to disguise the Elephant inside a towel when it went into the washing machine and dyer (since Reese was helping with laundry I knew she might spot it). When the Elephant came out of the dryer, Reese was asleep so i tossed it into a hamper sitting outside the laundry room. Our hampers are taller than Reese, so i wasn't concerned about her seeing it. Well...they're not tall enough. Not only did Reese spy the Elephant in the hamper, but she was on her tip toes trying to pull the Elephant out when I found her in the hallway the next morning. This led to another race to hide the "other" Elephant before she spotted it.
At this point it's likely she may have already figured out that there are two identical elephants, but I'm going to keep the ruse up until she can tell me directly--so at least for another few months at the rate we're going.
8. Visual discrimination: Reese can identify a small handful of items in her books. When asked to locate certain animals or objects (dogs, fish, cats, trees, etc) she points to them correctly almost all the time. She also can find blocks of the same shape in her box of blocks. If she brings me a cylinder and I ask for another cylinder, ("Can you find another one like this? Another cylinder?) most of the time she does. I even watch her dig through the blocks to locate the one she's looking for.
9. Hygiene: Reese was doing better with her tooth brushing routine thanks to some "training toothpaste" (fluoride free, berry flavored gel) until this week. Now she insists on brushing her teeth by herself. But instead of brushing, she chews and sucks on the brush. I've taken two different approaches with limited success: 1. Getting a second brush out (hers came in a two-pack) and letting her brush my teeth while I brush hers. She usually succeeds in gaging me and hitting my nose with the brush. 2. She holds one brush and "brushes" her teeth while I use another to do the actual scrubbing. There's been limited success on this front since she then tries grabbing both of the brushes or throwing one. Diaper changes are also getting harder and harder. Even with something to hold on to (to distract her), Reese rolls over and tires to climb off her changing table in the midst of nearly every diaper change or clothing change. Everything's a battle. She still enjoys brushing her hair, though, and on occasion even brushes mommy's too. Yesterday she found our lint brush and started brushing her hair with it. Good generalization skills I thought, even if it did mean lint in her hair for a while.
* The eating pictures are one's Catherine took of Reese enjoying a home-made smore. Catherine even made the marshmallows from scratch.
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