Who has time for a photo shoot these days?
Here are some candid shots of Rowan in our everyday life.
This is her "duck face"
*Easter*
Monday, April 21, 2014
Friday, April 4, 2014
21 Months
The last quarterly update before our baby turns two! The past 3 months have been just an explosion of communication and independence. Since I wrote this days ago and still don't have pictures loaded on my computer, I will post this and promise to follow up with recent pics soon!
-She can talk in short sentences now. Three or four words at a time is about her max. Like, "I hold you momma." She says her c's and k's like t's such as binty instead of binky. The other letter that trips her up is x so Alex's name continues to sound like Alice.
- She is understanding a lot more sign language and attempting to sign back to us more things. That part is tricky because her dexterity is not that great so she thinks she is communicating well and we are just throwing a hundred guesses as what two hands waving around means. We like to play a game that we ask her "Where is the ... " and then she runs off to go find whatever we just signed. She knows almost all her toys and then various other objects. Her favorite are finding the boy and girl little people. If she searches for one, she must find the other. I feel like we are in a time where she is really merging the two languages together. She will communicate in both ways for different things. If we tell her to show us with her hands, she will attempt to sign.
-I have started to sign more songs to her and she picks up on those signs quicker. Current favorites are "Dark Horse" by KP and "Love me again" by John Newman. There is a part in the KP song that she makes a duck face to and it cracks me up. I need to get that on video. She also loves the Hot Dog song off Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, 3 blind mice, ABC's, Jesus loves me, and Row Row Row Your boat (or Ro Ro's song as she calls it).
-She finally is staying in her church classroom by herself. We went through a long stint of her sobbing every time we dropped her off, to the point where they called us from church to come back and get her. I stopped even trying to leave for about a month or two. She finally came around though and now likes to sing songs with her friends. She is familiar with the Bible now and likes to carry hers around the house and read it to her babies or herself. We read a lot out of it around Christmas and the other day I caught her staring at the page of Mary and Joseph entering Bethlehem and she was yelling 'No room, no room!" She currently is liking the story of Noah and all the animals, big surprise.
- Her schedule shifted thanks to daylight savings for the better. She now gets up somewhere around 7:45. There have been some random mornings that she has slept in until 9:15 or so! I never thought this day would come again that I could wake up happy and fully awake when she got up. Hopefully we never see 5:45 wake up calls again! She is up all morning, eats lunch around noon and then goes down for nap around 1. She has been taking 2.5-3.5 hr long naps, which also has been great. She eats a snack when she wakes up, dinner around 6 then bedtime by 8. Her nap and bedtime routine is now just a book, prayer and song. We gave her binky back to her in Feb after she stopped sleeping through the nights and just recently we have tried taking it away at night time again. She will make it until 5 or 6 am and then usually cries out for it. To which one of us goes running in there and gives it to her so she goes back to sleep and so can we! She also still sleeps with her blankets and whatever random animal/baby she picks for that day.
-She has gotten to the age where naps are finally easy. She can be convinced to go back to sleep usually if she wakes earlier than she should. I can reason with her that it is still dark out and the moon is out or that everyone else is still napping and we will play when it is time to get up. She will ask to be sung another song and then she will lay back down for me.
- Her eating patterns have been weird lately. She will skip whole meals and not want anything. She has given up on any vegetable that isn't a sweet potato. It was like overnight she decided one day to hate veggies. She now feels the need to remove them from her plate and put them in her drink cup cutout on her tray. She still eats oatmeal with cubes for breakfast with an occasional pancake thrown in there. Still loves chicken, beans, yogurt with crunchies, bananas, cottage cheese, eggs, squeezies, and pretzels. Her new favorite food is blueberries. Still is leery about noodles and sandwiches. She actually gagged when I made her take a bite of a PBJ sandwich I made her. She hasn't been eating toast either lately. Lunchtime is usually left overs from the dinner before since she won't eat normal kid lunch meals. She still only drinks milk and water.
- She can count to ten, sometimes seven trips her up and she says three, and then proceeds to count up from three again. She also can sing her ABC's if you sing along with her, skipping some letters of course but for the most part she can do it. We are working on shapes and colors still. I think we finally have circles down but the rest is still a bunch of guessing and until recently she called everything blue or black.
-We have started disciplining some. She now sits in time out in the chair in her room for 2 min when she disobeys. She also gets sent to her room for crying, whining and other annoying behavior and is invited to join us when she is all done acting that way. Both of these have gone over fairly well and made our jobs as parents easier. We are trying to give her more choices but it's hard when she picks her own option to redirect her. She also likes to do things by herself, such as put on her shoes and jacket. She doesn't have the motor skills to do either of these independently so mornings can sometimes take a long time to eat, get dressed and out the door. We read the love and logic books and a book called "Loving your kids on purpose." Both of those gave us a foundation of what we do for discipline now.
-She finally is doing better in the car. She has historically been tough in the car, crying, whining, needing constant entertainment and attention, fighting with being strapped in...ect. She now will look at her books and "read" as we drive around and I don't have to constantly sing songs to her. She still reminds me when she is all done and wants out though.
-Potty training is ramping up at our house. She now is taken to the potty every few hours and gets treats for keeping her diaper dry in between. She alternates between sitting on the big potty or her potty chair. She is 50/50 for telling us ahead of time that she needs to poop, usually it is as she is going she informs us. My mom bought her some training underwear for her house that Rowan gets to wear, I haven't taken it to that level yet at our house.
-She has a plastic green chair that she drags around the house to gain access to tall places. She drags it to our bed to climb up in. She drags it to the kitchen to help me cook on the counters. She drags it to the light switch to turn them on. You can see how proud she is when she conquers a new challenge by herself by using that chair.
-She still takes showers primarily with me. She likes getting out and putting her cat towel on. She doesn't like lotion and brushing her hair much anymore, she would rather run around naked. She does sit still for me so I can dry her hair and put "medicine" aka aquaphor on her face. She has some really dry areas around her mouth that we aren't sure if they are allergic reactions to food she is eating or just bad eczema.
-She is wearing 18mo and 2T clothes. She has stayed true to sizes her whole life which makes shopping a little easier. She is still in size 4 diapers at night and no adjustments to her cloth diapers during the day. She wears size 7 shoes and seems to have huge feet. I don't know what is normal for her age but they sure look big.
-She likes to play the matching game. I say, "Who goes with grandma?" and she answers "Grandpa!" We match all the people in our family and all our friends. Sometimes we match objects too.
- She likes playing with play dough, feeding her animals and dolly, coloring, puzzles, reading books, riding her horsey, finding nuts for the squirrels, watching bubble guppies, singing and dancing, playing in the Tupperware drawer, putting the lids together with the bowls, and putting on shoes of all sizes.
-I can now make two braided pigtails in her hair. It is getting so long!
-She is really into babies lately, real and fake. She likes to help give them binkys, feed them, wrap them in her blankets and tuck them into bed.
-She understands our jobs a little now. She will sign and say daddy, work, numbers every morning when Matt leaves the house. Then at night time she will sign and say momma, work, babies.
-Dad and her like to shoot hoops. She dunks with dad and he is teaching her how to throw a ball better.
-We have started watching a little TV at home. When I need to get ready or make dinner she can be easily distracted by an episode of the Bubble Guppies. Her favorite episodes are Arctic Life, Triple Track Train Race, The Moon Rocks and Crayon Prix. All time fav award goes to the arctic episode. She knows the songs and loves to talk about polar bears. We also watched our first whole movie with Lynley a couple weeks ago, Frozen. She now randomly blurts out, "Let it go!"
-She fears the beard. Any guy with facial hair is frightening to her and she will run at me to pick her up. She then buries her head in my neck and won't look at anyone.
-She still likes to hide in the cabinets. I will find her toys in random pots and bowls, evidence that she has been there :)
I have started viewing her more as a buddy and less as a responsibility. As she has grown, she is less needy and helpless and more of her own little person. We are mommy and Rowan, out doing things and conquering the world. She is my little helper, cheerleader, companion and still my favorite baby (as I like to tell her when I leave for work) . It is neat to experience the days with her, taking them in as she sees them. I've started allowing more time for things to get done and attempted to slow the pace down to allow for detours in the plan. I love that we are developing a relationship that goes two ways. This is a really fun age and I am loving most of what it entails.
-She can talk in short sentences now. Three or four words at a time is about her max. Like, "I hold you momma." She says her c's and k's like t's such as binty instead of binky. The other letter that trips her up is x so Alex's name continues to sound like Alice.
- She is understanding a lot more sign language and attempting to sign back to us more things. That part is tricky because her dexterity is not that great so she thinks she is communicating well and we are just throwing a hundred guesses as what two hands waving around means. We like to play a game that we ask her "Where is the ... " and then she runs off to go find whatever we just signed. She knows almost all her toys and then various other objects. Her favorite are finding the boy and girl little people. If she searches for one, she must find the other. I feel like we are in a time where she is really merging the two languages together. She will communicate in both ways for different things. If we tell her to show us with her hands, she will attempt to sign.
-I have started to sign more songs to her and she picks up on those signs quicker. Current favorites are "Dark Horse" by KP and "Love me again" by John Newman. There is a part in the KP song that she makes a duck face to and it cracks me up. I need to get that on video. She also loves the Hot Dog song off Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, 3 blind mice, ABC's, Jesus loves me, and Row Row Row Your boat (or Ro Ro's song as she calls it).
-She finally is staying in her church classroom by herself. We went through a long stint of her sobbing every time we dropped her off, to the point where they called us from church to come back and get her. I stopped even trying to leave for about a month or two. She finally came around though and now likes to sing songs with her friends. She is familiar with the Bible now and likes to carry hers around the house and read it to her babies or herself. We read a lot out of it around Christmas and the other day I caught her staring at the page of Mary and Joseph entering Bethlehem and she was yelling 'No room, no room!" She currently is liking the story of Noah and all the animals, big surprise.
- Her schedule shifted thanks to daylight savings for the better. She now gets up somewhere around 7:45. There have been some random mornings that she has slept in until 9:15 or so! I never thought this day would come again that I could wake up happy and fully awake when she got up. Hopefully we never see 5:45 wake up calls again! She is up all morning, eats lunch around noon and then goes down for nap around 1. She has been taking 2.5-3.5 hr long naps, which also has been great. She eats a snack when she wakes up, dinner around 6 then bedtime by 8. Her nap and bedtime routine is now just a book, prayer and song. We gave her binky back to her in Feb after she stopped sleeping through the nights and just recently we have tried taking it away at night time again. She will make it until 5 or 6 am and then usually cries out for it. To which one of us goes running in there and gives it to her so she goes back to sleep and so can we! She also still sleeps with her blankets and whatever random animal/baby she picks for that day.
-She has gotten to the age where naps are finally easy. She can be convinced to go back to sleep usually if she wakes earlier than she should. I can reason with her that it is still dark out and the moon is out or that everyone else is still napping and we will play when it is time to get up. She will ask to be sung another song and then she will lay back down for me.
- Her eating patterns have been weird lately. She will skip whole meals and not want anything. She has given up on any vegetable that isn't a sweet potato. It was like overnight she decided one day to hate veggies. She now feels the need to remove them from her plate and put them in her drink cup cutout on her tray. She still eats oatmeal with cubes for breakfast with an occasional pancake thrown in there. Still loves chicken, beans, yogurt with crunchies, bananas, cottage cheese, eggs, squeezies, and pretzels. Her new favorite food is blueberries. Still is leery about noodles and sandwiches. She actually gagged when I made her take a bite of a PBJ sandwich I made her. She hasn't been eating toast either lately. Lunchtime is usually left overs from the dinner before since she won't eat normal kid lunch meals. She still only drinks milk and water.
- She can count to ten, sometimes seven trips her up and she says three, and then proceeds to count up from three again. She also can sing her ABC's if you sing along with her, skipping some letters of course but for the most part she can do it. We are working on shapes and colors still. I think we finally have circles down but the rest is still a bunch of guessing and until recently she called everything blue or black.
-We have started disciplining some. She now sits in time out in the chair in her room for 2 min when she disobeys. She also gets sent to her room for crying, whining and other annoying behavior and is invited to join us when she is all done acting that way. Both of these have gone over fairly well and made our jobs as parents easier. We are trying to give her more choices but it's hard when she picks her own option to redirect her. She also likes to do things by herself, such as put on her shoes and jacket. She doesn't have the motor skills to do either of these independently so mornings can sometimes take a long time to eat, get dressed and out the door. We read the love and logic books and a book called "Loving your kids on purpose." Both of those gave us a foundation of what we do for discipline now.
-She finally is doing better in the car. She has historically been tough in the car, crying, whining, needing constant entertainment and attention, fighting with being strapped in...ect. She now will look at her books and "read" as we drive around and I don't have to constantly sing songs to her. She still reminds me when she is all done and wants out though.
-Potty training is ramping up at our house. She now is taken to the potty every few hours and gets treats for keeping her diaper dry in between. She alternates between sitting on the big potty or her potty chair. She is 50/50 for telling us ahead of time that she needs to poop, usually it is as she is going she informs us. My mom bought her some training underwear for her house that Rowan gets to wear, I haven't taken it to that level yet at our house.
-She has a plastic green chair that she drags around the house to gain access to tall places. She drags it to our bed to climb up in. She drags it to the kitchen to help me cook on the counters. She drags it to the light switch to turn them on. You can see how proud she is when she conquers a new challenge by herself by using that chair.
-She still takes showers primarily with me. She likes getting out and putting her cat towel on. She doesn't like lotion and brushing her hair much anymore, she would rather run around naked. She does sit still for me so I can dry her hair and put "medicine" aka aquaphor on her face. She has some really dry areas around her mouth that we aren't sure if they are allergic reactions to food she is eating or just bad eczema.
-She is wearing 18mo and 2T clothes. She has stayed true to sizes her whole life which makes shopping a little easier. She is still in size 4 diapers at night and no adjustments to her cloth diapers during the day. She wears size 7 shoes and seems to have huge feet. I don't know what is normal for her age but they sure look big.
-She likes to play the matching game. I say, "Who goes with grandma?" and she answers "Grandpa!" We match all the people in our family and all our friends. Sometimes we match objects too.
- She likes playing with play dough, feeding her animals and dolly, coloring, puzzles, reading books, riding her horsey, finding nuts for the squirrels, watching bubble guppies, singing and dancing, playing in the Tupperware drawer, putting the lids together with the bowls, and putting on shoes of all sizes.
-I can now make two braided pigtails in her hair. It is getting so long!
-She is really into babies lately, real and fake. She likes to help give them binkys, feed them, wrap them in her blankets and tuck them into bed.
-She understands our jobs a little now. She will sign and say daddy, work, numbers every morning when Matt leaves the house. Then at night time she will sign and say momma, work, babies.
-Dad and her like to shoot hoops. She dunks with dad and he is teaching her how to throw a ball better.
-We have started watching a little TV at home. When I need to get ready or make dinner she can be easily distracted by an episode of the Bubble Guppies. Her favorite episodes are Arctic Life, Triple Track Train Race, The Moon Rocks and Crayon Prix. All time fav award goes to the arctic episode. She knows the songs and loves to talk about polar bears. We also watched our first whole movie with Lynley a couple weeks ago, Frozen. She now randomly blurts out, "Let it go!"
-She fears the beard. Any guy with facial hair is frightening to her and she will run at me to pick her up. She then buries her head in my neck and won't look at anyone.
-She still likes to hide in the cabinets. I will find her toys in random pots and bowls, evidence that she has been there :)
I have started viewing her more as a buddy and less as a responsibility. As she has grown, she is less needy and helpless and more of her own little person. We are mommy and Rowan, out doing things and conquering the world. She is my little helper, cheerleader, companion and still my favorite baby (as I like to tell her when I leave for work) . It is neat to experience the days with her, taking them in as she sees them. I've started allowing more time for things to get done and attempted to slow the pace down to allow for detours in the plan. I love that we are developing a relationship that goes two ways. This is a really fun age and I am loving most of what it entails.
Thursday, January 9, 2014
December
We did so many fun things with Rowan around the holidays I wanted to do a picture recap. If I was on top of blogging, these each could have been their own post. But I'm not, so this is second best :)
Holidays are so much more fun with kids and I loved watching her experience all that was around her in excitement and awe. Kansas City has a lot of fun things to do around Christmas time, some I did as a kid, others I had no idea even existed. I researched some fun things to take her to and we had lots of family time to top off a really fun month.
I saw another blogger do this last Christmas and I knew it was top of my list for this year's advent. I had a mom craft day and friends come over to craft these felt nativity scenes for our kids. Ro and I used ours a lot over the month. We would read her bible and act out what all the people did. Minus two sheep being decapitated by the end of the season it was a success. Lynley and her also played with Nana's nativity when they were at her house.
Since Ro is still rear facing in her car seat, it is hard for her to see all the Christmas lights. So one night when it wasn't too cold, I bundled her up and we took a wagon ride around the neighborhood to check them out.
Then on Christmas Eve, we went to the Lee's Summit Lake light show with Nana and Papa and Lynley. We drove through a park of lights and saw everything from trains, to bears playing instruments to Santa riding a sleigh. The girls got to sit on Papa's lap since we drive through at 5 mph and they loved it.
Picking out our tree from Lowes
Fun at Crown Center
Fun at Union Station
Building fires in the backyard
Making cookies with Grandma Lolo, Grandma and Aunt Shelby. Then again with Lynley and Aunt Leslie!
Christmas Eve midnight service at Jacob's Well
And finally Christmas Morning and Afternoon!
Hope you all had a great holiday season too!
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