This is Dot on a typical morning, watching an educational video while I get breakfast ready.
Dot woke up on time but I was still laying down after only getting about four hours of sleep. She sat next to me and recited all her numbers up to twenty! She missed a few between 13 and 17 but it was still pretty amazing. 2, 8, 9, and 10 are definitely sounding like they should. Then she ran through the alphabet and she got nearly all of those, and a lot of them sound great, too. She can say blue and yellow well enough to distinguish them now, and still knows all the rest of them even though she can’t say them yet. She tries to say square and circle too but I can only tell if she’s pointing to one. Of course she loves to say Octogon! Over the last couple of months she’s started discovering how they occur in real life. She especially likes the circle inside the doorknob that locks the door, and has managed to lock the bedroom door quite a few times. She locked me out a couple of times, too.
Dot got books and a Goodnight Moon bunny from me, books and clothes from Grandma, and a bear and an art easel from Nanna and Pappa. We’re saving the art easel for later – she is nearly out of paper from a huge pad that we set on the floor for her.
I put her in the little frog and shamrock dress that her Nanna made last year, and it still fit great! It was definitely much shorter than a year ago, and looked so cute with pants.
Her birthday announcements are finally done. I think I’m feeling well enough to start planning a party for her. She won’t mind if it is late – and I have all these cool supplies from the Huggies Pull-Ups.
We watched the potty training video today. Dot loves the songs and wants me to play them over and over. I will have to put them on her “phone” for her.
It has been an interesting and full year for all of us, largely due to Dot getting bigger and learning so much. She is 21 months old now, and has recently started her terrible twos! Really, though, she is a generally sweet, kind, active, and intelligent little girl. She likes to share everything, can read well over 100 words (and can sign most of them), is starting to say some words, and loves to help out around the house. She currently helps put laundry into the dryer, restock the fridge with water bottles, and throws her diapers away. She can also identify all of her colors, twenty basic shapes, knows most of the alphabet, can find Middle C and a few other notes on the piano, and can complete simple puzzles. She has had quite an exciting year of learning about her world.
This afternoon Dot brought her Shape-O to me in the dining room. Normally I don’t let her play with it outside the bedroom but I went ahead and took the shapes out for her. She usually puts them right back inside but of course the few times she gets it outside the bedroom, the pieces get scattered. After dinner during my cleaning hour, I went to collect the pieces, and was a little bit amazed to find that she had taken some of the shapes and matched them up to a shapes coloring page she had snitched from me earlier. I also noticed that she had stamped beavers (we love the Crayola Tadoodles Stamps) inside each shape during her coloring time! She managed to get a little beaver stamped on my nightcoat, too. It was adorable and I was almost sad to see that it washed out in the laundry without a trace.
Dot and Madison relaxing on Mama’s bed last night.
