Dear Vivian {Month 19}

Happy 19 months, Big Girl. I just adore your sweet face!

Our brown chair photos days may be drawing to a close. You love to happily wiggle and writhe in the chair, and it's hard for me to take your birthday photo one-handed when my other hand is on your leg in case you fall (hence the blurry pictures). Today you very gracefully peeked over the edge of the chair at the bookshelf and then slid down off the chair on your tummy.
I think it's fair to say the crawling ship has sailed. You scoot with utter efficiency and your PT pointed out that you're old enough to know what you want. So we're letting go of the crawling (though did have a couple crawling sprints over the weekend with daddy) and focusing on STANDING, CRUISING and WALKING! You've always preferred that stuff anyway - you like to see the world as you move and groove. You love your books, you love eating strawberries, you like to pretend you're talking on the phone, you kiss everything and everyone and you smile and laugh with ease. I absolutely LOVE spending our days together, PIC!
I'm pulling back on the ASL a little bit lately (a constant internal dilemma of mine) but you still picked up some new ones this month: boy, girl, home, frog, orange, strawberry, butterfly, walk, yellow, turtle. One day when we were eating you signed "orange crackers" all on your own - you were asking for your goldfish crackers. Expressed language now consists of : mama and dada (you often sign it as you say it lately), all done (now with the /l/ sound), up, bye bye, uh oh and nana (banana).

9 minutes {March 9, 2009 2:32 PM}

We're outside on the porch today. It's breezy but warm in the sun.

You pull the penguin and frog out from your toy and put them down the spiral.

You hear a bird - a crow - and fuss for a moment as if you're frightened, but then you point to your ear to tell me "I heard that."

You scoot over to your hippo walker/scooter and play with it for awhile. I comment on the wind.

You pick up the lens cap from the camera, then the frog, and knock them together a bit.

The phone rings inside the house. You point to your ear, acknowledging that you heard it. Then you pretend the lens cap is your phone, putting it up to your ear and talking. You put it down the spiral toy, pick it up again as if it's a phone and then you kiss it.

You look up towards the tree, hear birds and sign bird. The timer beeps and you help me push stop. 9 minutes are up.

After the 9 minutes you picked up your oatmeal box and started dumping out the blocks through the square I cut out of the lid. I enjoy this action shot with the "B" block falling out.