Author: Louanne

“It’s been a month??”

Mike and I can’t believe that we have been home from China for a month already. The time has seemed to fly past since we came home from the trip! We are so glad we went, but some days it seems amazing that we already spent a month there and came home 🙂

Nadia got another lollipop from Lindsay at the bank and so here are some shots of her enjoying it today. She is not a big sweets girl, so I got to finish it for her.

Nadia is 18 months old today! She weighed 20 pounds 2 ounces and measured 31.25 inches. Yay for finally breaking 20 pounds. On the height/weight chart that puts her at 3% for weight and 50% for height. So you can imagine what an adventure finding the right clothing is for her. Thanks again to everyone who gave us their hand-me-downs because we are working with a wide variety of styles and brands in 12 and 18 month sizes. The only thing we needed to buy her this spring was summer time jammies. She didn’t “need” the adorable dress we got her at Kohl’s this weekend, but it was too cute to pass up and on sale!

We have been commenting lately that Nadia is talking a lot and seems to be way ahead of most other kids in her receptive learning. My dad kept commenting that he thought there was actually an adult in her body, not a toddler when they visited last weekend. So, we decided last Monday to start counting how many words she is able to say. We were amazed that she is actually at about 160 words right now…and adds probably 5-10 words to her vocabulary ever day. I would say that she says about half of them clearly and the other half can only be understood by us, but the pediatrician said that those still count because she is able to make us understand what word she is saying and can make her needs known. The doctor also said that she has never seen a child of that age do so well. This is also quite amazing when you consider that she didn’t hear a single word of English until she was nine months old. And she is also starting to combine words, which is really great. Some examples are: “Dada go”, “please pretzel”, “come on”, and “Mama UP”. Oh and by the way…..she doesn’t know the word “MINE”

Here are some more 18 month Nadia facts:

• When she first wakes up she just laughs and smiles, and the sweetness of it overwhelms us.
• Her favorite toy is still the stacking cups. She just does different things with them now than she did 9 months ago.
• She loves to be read to. And most days she will sit by the shelf where her books are and read to herself for awhile.
• I have started taking her to the library to pick out books. I think she will really like story time there when she is a few months older.
• She knows all the animals in her Little People zoo (there’s 26 of them) and many of the sounds.
• Speaking of sounds: this girl is a major sound effects child. I really think she is going to be the only girl she hangs out with who knows how to do sound effects well. Almost anything she hears that is out of the ordinary, she will copy. She imitates horns honking, timers beeping, cars driving, animal sounds, coughs, laughs, musical instruments, and on and on.
• Yogurt is still her favorite food.
• Mac and Cheese is high on the list too.
• She still doesn’t like fruit. Or sweets for that matter except vanilla ice cream or the occasional muffin.
• She can super-speed crawl up the steps to the second floor of our house in about half a second, but she doesn’t know how to climb back down them. So her self-conceived solution is to say, “up” to us, expecting us to pick her up and carry her back down them…so that she can immediately climb right back up them again.
• She loves to wave at people and will give you “5”
• She is truly our shadow. She wants to mimic or try everything we do. Or at least be right on top of us or sitting on our feet when we are trying to accomplish a task. This also goes for repeating words.
• We are still bathing her in the kitchen sink and she loves it. It’s splash city!
• We bought a back-up “baby” for her since her original one is getting pretty worn. Then we put it in the crib in the hope that she would get used to it, since it’s a different color. That way if necessary we could put away the old one. She now has to have both babies at bedtime…and actually says, “babies” now instead of “baby”. HA HA!
• She loves to be tickled and her laugh is the most precious sound I have ever heard.
• She is still sleeping about 12 hours a night. More and more she is only having 1 nap a day instead of 2.
• She has started to have little tantrums and show a bit of her will. But we don’t back down on the rules and the tantrums are very short…just a few seconds long. We are hoping to pass the terrible 2’s early 🙂
• For most car rides she sings along with the music on the radio. She seems to prefer classic rock to all other music. CCR and James Taylor are big hits when we are out running errands. Her singing consists of “ba ba ba ba” to the beat. When the song fades she yells out ALL DONE and then she starts singing along with the next one. She does this in stores too when she hears the songs change.
• Music also leads to dancing. Even if it’s just the background music on a commercial when I have the news on. In the car she waves her arms around to the beat.
• She loves brushing her teeth.
• She says, “thank you” now regularly. Buckle her up in the car, “thank you.” Give her a cracker, “thank you.” Fix the clip in her hair, “thank you.”
• She also says, “xie xie”…which is Chinese for “thank you.” 🙂
• She loves to be on Mike’s shoulders. She gets so excited and asks me to do it, but I’m not strong enough for that.
• Once on Mike’s shoulders she will say, “Walk, walk” because she wants to go out around the neighborhood.
• She said “I love you” for the first time the other day. She said it to Mike as we were leaving the house, and it was crystal clear.

That’s all I can think of for now, but I just have to say that she is just so fun!!! Watching her learn is such an amazing blessing.

About a week and a half ago my friend Shelley invited some women over for a craft night. Her friend Stephanie sells Close to my Heart and she had the cutest kits for us for us to make for Mother’s Day. We had a great time and I really liked all the cool stamp stuff we were able to do. I also learned how to “distress” paper for scrapbooking and crafts. You never know when that skill might come in handy.

“The Bunny, the bunny, whoa I love the bunny.”

A couple days ago we had a visitor in our front and back yard. Nadia got all excited when she saw the bunny through the window and said, “HOP HOP HOP!” I grabbed the camera and we headed right out the door. I didn’t want to scare the bunny and she hopped all around our back yard. All the while Nadia was going, “HOP HOP HOP DOWN HOP HOP HOP DOWN!!!” I told her we didn’t want to scare the bunny and the next thing we knew it hopped right up to my feet! This was no wild rabbit and I hope that nothing happens to it living in the wild now that it’s been let go. I put Nadia down and she reached for the bunny, but it was more interested in eating grass. It’s just so fun to see Nadia get so excited like she did about the bunny.