Saturday, July 24, 2010

The Babe

Selena's given Allie a new nickname.  She calls her babe.  It's cute.

Allie's been learning new words.  Some new words are shoes, and banana.  Usually when I ask her a question if she agrees she makes happy noises, and if she disagrees she makes whiny noises, but the other day I asked her if she wanted something and she simply replied, "No", very clearly.  When she does something she's proud of she says, "da" in the tone of "tada".  She pretty much understands everything I say.  I can ask her to get things, or go find someone.

She continues to amaze me at her mobility.  She's been following her sister climbing everywhere.  At the playground I'll turn around and she'll be on the second or third rung of a ladder.  Eek.  If the playground has even half way manageable steps she can get to the top and go down the slide (feet first on her tummy) by herself.  She can easily run/walk down a hill and stop at the bottom without falling.  She thinks its hilarious to run away mid diaper change.  She takes off giggling with glee.  (Sound familiar?  Dyna and Selena both love/loved to run away from me).

Sleep.  The constant challenge.  Maybe partly to blame on my philosophical thoughts about it.  She has now become hard to put down for a nap.  I used to turn on the TV for Selena while I put Allie down, but now Allie likes to watch TV, or at least the intro music for Super Why.  She gets all excited and dances.  Stomping her feet and twirling in circles.  Night time has also become hard.  She does not want to be left out.  She wants to be involved when Floyd reads books to Selena.  Unfortunately most of the time that is by sitting on the books.  If I say the word sleep she starts screaming.  Some nights it is fine, she'll come to me, crawl in my lap and nurse to sleep.  But other nights if I try to take her into the bedroom, she freaks out.  Some nights she has cried for an hour.  Nothing consoles her.  If I try to hold her she'll jump out of my arms.  If I let her leave the bedroom she goes to the corner and cries.  We've seemed to have adopted a long summer night schedule and have been staying up late and sleeping in.  I guess that's ok.

She's been potty training herself.  (Well not really)  Every time I or Selena uses the toilet.  She wants to as well.  Sometimes I take off her diaper, other times I just set her up there with it on.  Then she gets off and gets some toilet paper.  Pretends to wipe and then drops it in the toilet and flushes.  Granted she has never actually gone in the potty, but its cute just the same.  Except when she uses it as an excuse to not go to bed.  One night I tried to put her to bed and she got mad.  When I let her out of the room she went to the bathroom and asked to sit on the toilet.  Well I have to admit it was kind of cute.  After she went potty then she wanted a drink of water.

She can use a fork and spoon pretty easily now.  She doesn't seem to have a real favorite food at the moment.  Except maybe berries.  We've been doing a lot of berry picking and she devours the berries as quickly as she can.  She is very good at spotting berries and picking them herself.  She also keeps on picking the unripe blueberries in our back yard.  She still eats dog food on occasion.  She likes sitting in my lap and eating the beans and berries off my salad.  She also likes feeding you.  She tries to stuff food in my mouth faster than I can chew.

She likes animals.  She always points out dogs and crows when she sees them.  She loves our trips to the zoo and pays more attention to the animals than Selena does.  She's been playing with Legos a lot lately and she can fit them together and pull them apart by herself.

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