December update....

So much changes with her almost daily – it’s so funny to see that last month she had just started eating the finger foods and drinking from the sippy cup. Now, that’s just her routine. Her teachers in daycare said that she eats her lunch and snacks so fast that they’ve asked us to send more for her to eat – she’s apparently been finishing up much faster than the other kids. I hope she’s eating fast because she likes the food I’m making her! It sure is a lot of work, but its great to know that she’s eating healthy, homemade foods! Her favorites lately have been: white chili that I made in the slow cooker (white beans – which she LOVED and shredded chicken and onion simmered in a chicken broth), more vegetable pancakes (if you remember, last month I had made her “pea pancakes” made from pureed peas… I’ve expanded the repertoire to include green bean pancakes, summer vegetable (yellow squash and zucchini) pancakes, carrot pancakes, lentil bean pancakes and spinach pancakes. I’ve learned that she’ll eat any vegetable if I make it in pancake form!

She’s still choosing not to walk independently yet... she’s cruising a ton, but when it comes to taking more than 4 steps – she drops to the ground and crawls (I think she realizes it’s much faster that way!) It does seem that she’s focusing all her energy on the talking… She’s got a million words under her belt (well, probably more about 20 or so) that she uses with about 8-10 on a regular basis. Some of the funnier ones are:

-EIEIO (from Old MacDonald… we discovered she knew this when we passed by a McDonald’s restaurant and she was pointing to it (maybe the bright colors?) and I said “That’s McDonald’s” and she said “EIEIEIEI” Mike and I burst out laughing!

-“bopping” which is “shopping” – she LOVES going to the grocery store with me, and whenever we pass by anyplace that has shopping carts, her legs go crazy (her sign of excitement) and she says “bopping!!”

-“gabba” – one of her favorite shows besides Dora the Explorer is “Yo Gabba Gabba” (a very odd show, with funny songs like “Don’t bite your friends” and “Keep your hands to yourself” and “high five”) anyway, when we ask her if she wants to watch it, she says “GABBA!”

-Another TV word is “backpack” – Dora has a backpack in her show, and I bought SiSi a little backpack for herself to keep her things in, obviously she was very excited about that!

-“Down” – meaning “touchdown”, which she does complete with the hands up for touchdown

-“Bath” – self explanatory, but it’s actually the WAY she says it that’s funny. She LOVES her bath and whenever she talks about bath, she gets really serious.

She’s really been loving all the Christmas lights… she’s funny, too, when we pass a house with a lot of different colored lights on our way from the car to our house, she points at it and says “DAD!!!” and looks for Mike to see if he likes the lights too… for some reason she thinks he would enjoy them! (She also does that when she does “touchdown” she looks around for Mike to see if he saw her do it! (She’s a little bit of a ham). She also LOVES to smile for the camera (which you can probably tell by the pictures.) The minute we hold the camera up, she stops what she’s doing, looks up and smiles!

SiSi is loving the books, too. Her newest thing is that Mike shows SiSi two books and let her choose which one she wants him to read. It’s hilarious. Sometimes it takes her a good 30 seconds of looking back and forth at each book before she picks which one she wants.