Halloween Cuteness

Today we marched in Jackson Height's huge Halloween Parade.

 Dragon, meet Dragon and Dragon. Tess met twins wearing matching costumes.

Monkey marches in the parade. (Tess has started holding him out to the side like this when we walk. She tells me Monkey is walking.)

"Cheese." (I think this series could also be titled: Monkey's Halloween.)

 The wings and tail:

She's just started to take an interest in her castle, dragon, princess, and knight toys. Maybe because of the costume?

Fun and Games

 

Small Moments

• Yesterday Tess was having trouble settling down for nap, but she was really tired. I let her have some time alone, and I heard her crying in the other room. I peeked in to check on her, but I saw she was just looking at a book, so I figured she was fine. But the crying didn't stop, so I went over to see what was wrong. She was grabbing at a picture of cake in the book, and then putting her fingers in her mouth, furious that she couldn't EAT THAT CAKE!
• Cutting Tess's fingernails has always been one of my most dreaded tasks. But today there was this marvelous breakthrough. I asked Tess if she wanted to cut Monkey's fingernails. She did, and she not only sat still while I trimmed Monkey's nails, but also sat calmly while I did all of her fingers!!! Monkey is so useful these days. 
• I love the fact that she's starting to understand cause and effect, and sometimes she can even understand "this, then that." I can even bargain at times, and at other times, I can use imaginative play as a tool to achieve the desired end goal. :) This part I like much better than the blind screaming of 15 months.

Monkey's Vacation

As I've mentioned before on this blog, Monkey has become Tess's dearest companion. He goes with us everywhere. He sleeps with Tess. He has a special seat at the new table. (Tess told me this week that it's Monkey's chair.)

So you can imagine our dismay when Monkey fell off the stroller on Sunday during a walk and was lost to us forever. Tess was sleeping, and we dreaded the next time she would ask for him. We did an Internet search and fortunately Amazon could come to our rescue. We'd ordered a new monkey before she even woke up.

Sure enough, she looked for him later that afternoon. I told her that Monkey had taken a trip to visit Nana and Baba in Florida, and he would be gone for a few days, but he was coming back. She accepted this explanation, along with Doggie who became her stand-in-friend for the last few days. She asked for Monkey several times every day and whenever we'd go into her in the middle of the night, but whenever we'd tell her the story about Monkey coming back, she accepted Doggie and didn't cry. (That was a relief.)

The only time she cried was when she saw a boy with another monkey in music class on Wednesday. It was too much. She wanted Monkey.

So when I told her this evening that Dadda had picked up Monkey at the airport and was bringing him home, she got so excited. She kept saying "ah ah ee" and "Nana, Baba" on the way home. Eric had put Monkey in his seat, and she ran to him as soon as she got out of the stroller, squealing with delight. She hugged and kissed him and did a happy dance of jumping around in circles for a bit. Then she had Monkey jump up and down with enthusiasm.

Now Monkey stays close by, reunited at last. He's so much softer and cleaner now, but Tess hasn't noticed. ;)

Pumpkin Painting

Rather than carve pumpkins this year, I decided we'd paint them.

We started with brushes.

Then we tried our fingers.

But Tess hated having her fingers dirty.

Much better.

And an after-painting snack.

Eric's Birthday

Eric turned 45 on October 11th this year. I'm sadly late with photos, but here's a few of our family celebration. Tess now pantomimes blowing out candles every time she hears the word "birthday."

New Table

We recently bought a new little table and chairs from IKEA for Tess. She loved helping us put it together, and it's been a hit ever since. She plays here regularly, and feeds her monkey here at each meal time. It's a fun addition to the kitchen.

 Of course there's always the floor for reading fun.

I'm a Super Kicker

This is one of the few parts of soccer that Tess enjoys. Most of the other activities she'll only do if I remind her that she can have a sticker if she does them. But she likes to kick the ball.

And score. Often she kicks the ball right up to the goal and then picks it up and throws it in the net.

Then she gets to sing the song. Yay.

 And the ultimate reward! Stickers! On her "arm."

And one on the nose. "Ding dong,"her teacher says.

Little Things

• We have been loving Shaun the Sheep episodes. Tess points at the TV and says, "baaa" several times a day, hoping I'll let her watch one. Last night we were watching one together in which one of the sheep makes a funny face. Tess almost doubled over she thought it was so funny. She kept looking at me and sticking out her tongue, trying to mimic the face. So now we make funny faces for laughs.
• Tess is very interested in Eric's birthday. She likes to talk about him blowing out a candle. (She babbles and then puts her hand in front of her mouth and blows to pantomime the act.) The other day when my parents asked her about the birthday, she kept pointing at her head and saying, "Mama, Dada, ouwie." I couldn't figure out what she meant, so she kept pointing to the table adamantly. I then realized that she was talking about the head-scratcher that Eric got for his birthday.

I Spy

This is Tess's view from the couch in her room where we nurse before naps. One day she was nursing, staring at the bookcase, and then she sat up and said, "Meow, Meow!" I looked up, and sure enough, there is a picture of a cat, well...a tiger. Do you see it?

Video

A little video from Tuesday to demonstrate some of what I mention in the earlier post:

Tess Vocabulary – at almost 21 months

Animal names continue to grow, though she still only identifies animals by their sound or some key aspect that she can identify. For example, for squirrels, she pretends that she's eating nuts, and that's her word for squirrel. For frogs, she says “jump, jump.” She grunts twice for a pig. “Eeee” is horse. She roars for lions and dinosaurs and bears. Butterflies and bees are both “bee.” And she'll clearly yell out, “a bee,” when she sees one. She can almost say “cock-a-doodle-doo.” Oh, and she can say, “owl” and "fish." (And she likes to mention that Baba (my dad) likes to fish.)

She loves animals. She will sit by herself and look through an animal picture book for a long time. I bought a magnetic board with lots of animal pieces for the wedding. It's a toy designed for 3 year olds, and I was a little concerned she wouldn't use it, but my hunch was correct. She doesn't use the toy as it's intended, but she will spend 20 minutes quietly pulling out the animal magnets and lining them up on the floor and then putting them back. It's her favorite toy right now.

Some other concepts are similar to the animal sounds one. Sleeping is called "nigh, nigh." Cameras are now called "cheeeese." "Bus," which she is super proud of herself for now being able to pronounce, can mean "play some music," because Wheels on the Bus was her favorite song for so long.

Just today, she started making more attempts to repeat words back to me. She said, “socks,” “bye” and she made a good attempt at “shirt.”

She has a very clear and adorable, "tank doo," which she offers at appropriate times without prompting. She doesn't understand "peeesss" as clearly, though she will repeat it when prompted.

She constantly walks around telling little stories. She'll talk about the coat she is wearing, and how it has a “hat” (hood) and how Mommy (I went from mama to mommy this month) has a hat, etc. Today when she was in her crib for her nap, she sat with her juice and pretended to offer it to other people, saying, “babble, babble, babble, juice.” And I swear it sounded as if she was saying, “do you want some juice?” She is very good at mimicking intonation, and so it often sounds like she is repeating a whole sentence back, though in reality, she's repeating the intonation and filling in whatever words she knows.

Her use of intonation makes her limited words very expressive. “da, da” means: daddy, bye-bye, driving, yes, and all done depending on her intonation.

She's still doing what I call speech dyslexia. Shoes are “ish.” Sit is “iss.” Phone is “oaf.” Jon is “na.” And there are a couple more that she consistently does that I can't recall right now. It's like she latches onto the sound she can clearly understand and then uses the vowel in front of it.

She cannot pronounce the “k” sound. So book is “boop.” I will just make the "k" sound for her, and she always makes a "t" sound when attempting to mimic it.

She learned the word "bow," though she pronounces it "bough," kind of like how you'd say "bow, wow, wow." She always points to her back when she says it, and then she tries to say "dress," because she got to wear a pretty dress with a bow.

She calls attention to actions or mistakes in books. She points out "booboo's" everywhere. She says, "uh-oh" when things aren't right. She'll say "whoosh" to retell how someone runs by. And she often will act out something to try and express to me what happened.

She learned the ABC song just last week from her new babysitter's kids. She LOVES this song now, and can actually sing a good part of it! She can clearly start “A, B, C” and then it gets fuzzier, but still recognizable up to about G. She knows S, and T, and when it comes to the “next time won't you sing with me,” she grunts something for each of the words and then chimes in with a crystal clear “me” at the end.

She acts and behaves as if everyone is going to understand her babble. She acts as if she's communicating, and laughs at her own jokes. She also mimics me in lots of little ways. When I put her to bed at night, I read my Iphone in the dark. So she has now started bringing a toy phone to bed, so that she can hold a phone while we nurse.

She's started to be interested in numbers. All numbers are "eee" for three. All letters are either "o" or "e." But she points them out and talks about them. She loves an I Spy book we inherited from Owen. She will sit with it by herself for a long time, and also loves to look at it with other adults. She's gotten good at playing the game, and I'm regularly amazed at the objects she will identify when I say, "I spy..."

In regard to other developmental changes, she is better at puzzles, though it really frustrates her when she can't get a piece to fit. She has a very low frustration level and will quickly erupt into screaming when something doesn't work. We have an on-going joke now about her shoes, because of this. 

When she first started trying to take her shoes off by herself, she would get so frustrated that she would scream out, and believe me when I say it was LOUD. I started saying, "keep trying Tess! You can do it, Tess!" in equally dramatic style. This would make her laugh and make her keep trying. Now she can easily get her shoes off, but she always stops right before pulling them off, looks at me, and makes a little scream. I respond with my line, and she laughs and pulls her shoes right off.

She's started to like coloring and painting a bit. She likes cleaning up from art projects more than doing them, but she will do them for a very short while. She doesn't like finger paint or getting her hands dirty.

We have been in a little soccer class for three weeks now. She is mildly interested in the activities, usually walking when everyone else runs. However, she loves the shirt with the ball on it, saying "ball" and insisting that she wear it whenever she can see it in her drawer. And she loves that she gets stickers when the class is over. After a lack luster class, she gets so excited when we sit down to sing the good-bye song and get stickers. She's the only kid doing all the motions for the song. I'm thinking maybe dance classes are in order when she's a little older.

She's extremely lovable and demonstrative right now. She loves to give hugs, kisses me all day long, offers kisses to friends whenever we say good-bye, offers kisses to dogs she sees on the street, and makes us laugh and smile whenever we are with her. (Except when she's driving us crazy, of course.) It's really a delightful age.

Wedding Pictures

All jumbled up. Sorry, I don't have the patience to sort these all in Blogger right now.

Here's the bride and groom and their parents during the Hindu service:

Tess and Sydney, another flower girl. They became friends during the weekend.

Tess saying "eee" (horse). She LOVED the horse and cried and cried when it left.

Leader of the chanting and partying for the groom's guests as we approached the bride's party before the Hindu service.

The horse:

Aunt Bette looking pretty:

At the rehearsal dinner.

Trying on our bangles:

Here's Tess late in the evening at the dinner table:

After the Jewish Ceremony. (There were a lot of costume changes at this wedding.)

And more of the cute flower girl.