Thursday, September 30, 2010

Daily Peep: Kitty Friends

This afternoon, Anonymama, Peeper and I went to Target and the mall to buy birthday gifts for the twins, and a couple of outfits for Peeper (part of her birthday gift) and a few shirts for me.

On our way into Target, we ran into a friend of mine from elementary school and her mother. We didn't have much time to visit, but it was great to see her.

This evening, another friend - my oldest friend, actually; I've known her since kindergarten - came over for dinner, along with her partner and their three year old son.

This is where I'd love to post of photo of my old friends, or one of Peeper playing with my friend's son, but I didn't even think to get out the camera.

So, instead, here's one of Peeper harassing my parents' cats.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Daily Peep: Throw Me Something, Peeper!

Today, Peeper and I (and Anonygrandma) paid a call on Anonygrandpa and his friends (fen!) at work. 

While Grandpa went back and forth between patients and his desk, Peeper discovered the office stash of Mardi Gras decor.


Monday, September 27, 2010

Daily Peep: Periodic Panda Pic - 23 months (100 weeks)

She wasn't really feelin' Mr. Panda this morning on our way out the door to the airport, so the photo shoot required a bit of extra encouragement.


Twenty-Three Months

Dear Peeper:
You are twenty-three months old today, which means that you are now just a month away from being - Oh. My. God. - two years old!

Confession: I'm actually writing most of this post a few days early, and will double check it for accuracy then post it on the 27th, because we'll be on our way to the airport bright and early that morning, for our trip to Texas. I half-assed your last monthly letter because we were on our way to the beach, and I don't want to do that again, especially since this has been such a huge month for you.
Why so huge?

Well, it seems that you've hit that "language explosion" that everyone's been telling us to expect. It started at the beginning of this month, during our trip to the beach, and you've only sped up since then.

I've been updating my "official" list of your words and signs, and saw that in less than a month, you've about tripled your non-animal-sound spoken vocabulary!

And at this point, I'm having trouble keeping up with the new words, so I'm sure there are some that you're using that aren't even on the list.

I thought about including that list in this post, but I think I'll wait until next month, and post the full list of everything you're signing and saying at your birthday.

OMG. Next month is your birthday! Your second birthday!

I say that as though I'm surprised by it, but I've been working on plans for your party for at least a few weeks. Mostly "working" in my head so far, but now we've got a date set (Sunday 10/24 - we had to wait to see Mommy's work schedule before we could make it official) and I'm pricing bakeries (Our friend who made your first birthday cake has moved to Germany. How dare she?!) and debating whether to try making your cake - or, more likely, cupcakes or something similar - myself.

But, enough about next month, back to what you've been doing over the past month . . . .

In addition to all the new words you've learned, you're also starting to get your head wrapped around numbers.

You love to "count" objects, by pointing to them one by one, and saying, "Taa-ah, taa-ah . . . " and you're learning the actual numbers, too.

You definitely know what "two" means, you seem to recognize the numeral 1 and if I count slowly enough, you can (sometimes) fill in five, six, eight, nine and ten.

I know, it surpised the hell out of me, too.

You're getting better and better with your puzzles, even the harder ones, with really funky shapes (animals and such) and even some with no pictures under the pieces.

And you're all over the colors. You point to things and tell me that they are "bwooo" or "yehyoh" or "puhpoh" and are usually right. If I ask, you can sometimes tell me "geen" and "pik," too. (Although I think "bwoo" is your go-to answer when you're not sure.) When I ask you to "show me the (pick-a-color) one," you get that right more often than not, too.

Last week, as we were leaving the Fall Farm Fun Fest, you got all excited and started saying "Bwoo! Bwoo! Bwoo!" It took us a minute to realize that you were point right at a bright blue truck. (Cobalt. Shiny. Preeetty. Oh, sorry . . . .) A few minutes later, you pointed at your denim overalls and told me that they were "Bwoo!" too.

A while back, you evidently injured the nail on one of your big toes.

(We don't know how. We noticed it shortly after we got back from the beach. You'd not been away from us in over a week, and neither of us could remember anything happening that seemed like it should've done that kind of damage. It's been ages since you dropped that rock on your foot, and I think that might have been the other foot anyway, so it couldn't have been that. It's a mystery. But, I digress. . . . )

You have a bruise at the base of the toenail (I am so worried you're going to lose the nail, mostly because that would just be gross!) and you frequently point to it and tell me that it's "Puhpoh! Puhpoh!"

You spend a lot of time pointing out various injuries (real and imagined) on your poor little legs and feet. You've barely touched your shoes all summer, and you spend a lot of time outside, stepping on sticks and climbing on concrete and just being a kid, so you're all scratched and bruised and just generally well broken-in.

Everytime you notice one of these scratches or bruises, you say "Mama!" or "Mommy!" and point to it, signing "hurt" and expecting a kiss. You're pretty good at accepting blown kisses when necessary (and sometimes blown-and-bounced-off-two-mirrors kisses when we're in the car) and you often "self medicate" by kissing your own boo-boos.

You're also very sweet about kissing other people's boo-boos, and asking if they hurt.

The other day, I was walking around the backyard with you, in my barefeet, and told you that I didn't want to be in a certain area because it hurt my feet. (Under the trees, with sticks and pinecones and such.) After I got back on to the grass and put you down, I thought you were trying to pick something up, so I kept moving out of your way - until I realized that you were trying to kiss my feet!

When we went to the beach, Mommy did, well, to put it bluntly, a rather crappy job of sunscreening herself and got a rather nasty sunburn on her back. For several days, I put aloe vera on it for her, while you signed "hurt" and gave her kisses.

Even now, when you see the bottle of aloe vera, you point to it, and say "Mommy" and sign, "hurt." That's right. That's the stuff that Mommy put on her back when it was hurt. Little smarty-diaper girl!

Speaking of diapers, we may have taken the first couple of steps down the road to potty training. We've had the potty in the bathroom for ages, and you love to play with it, and you like to sit (with clothes on) and read, but we've not really been actively doing anything about it.

Lately, though, you've started occassionally telling us when you've pooped, or even once or twice, when you were about to poop.

We've also been lucky enough to catch a couple of poops (well, one and then the second half of another one) and pees (um, the second half of one) in the potty during nakey time, and have made a really big deal out of that. (Mommy made up a song and everything.)

So, for the past week or so, I've been trying to give you some nakey time and keep an eye on you, and give you a chance to sit on the potty and try everytime I change your diaper, and talk talk talk about pottying all the time.

You're digging Elmo's "Potty Time" video  . . . you'll do that poo-poo that you do so well . . . (Or, maybe, Mama's digging it.) and you just might get a book (probably also starring Elmo) about pottying for your birthday.

We're not in any rush, and we're certainly not looking at any kind of charts and stickers and such at this point, but we are thinking it might be time to start gently encouraging you in that direction.

As I said, we're leaving for Texas "today" and as quickly as you're picking up new words and skills, I can't even imagine how much more you'll be doing when we get home, just a week from now - let alone where you'll be next month, on your birthday.

And I can't wait to find out.

I love you my little talk-ball!


Love,
Mama

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Daily Peep: At the Pumpkin Patch

We took Peeper to another pumpkin farm this afternoon, and she had herself a good ol' time.

We didn't bother actually going out into the field and - believe it or not - we didn't actually bring home any pumpkins, but she found plenty of other things to do.

She's this tall this fall!
(She was
this tall last fall. Different farm. Same prop.)


There were several of these, and I think she's sort of starting to "get it."


She really liked the mums.


She got to see sheep, cows, goats, a bunny . . .


. . . and piggies.


She took a little wagon ride around the store.


And test drove some super-cool log furniture that was just her size.


And, of course, rode a pon . . . oh.

Oh my.

I guess that's where that saying comes from.


Saturday, September 25, 2010

Daily Peep: Pony Up

Earlier in the week, Shrike sent me a list of about four different fun things happening this weekend. Then some MOMS Club friends emailed the group about more fun things.

The Autism Awareness Fair being held within walking distance of our house, which included pony rides, was the clear winner.

It was a very nice event - in addition to the ponies, they had games, food, a bouncy house (bouncy dragon, actually), face painting, balloon animals (including the cutest balloon Cookie Monster you've ever seen), "sensory" activities (like a table full of shaving cream), a live band, therapy dogs and three rooms worth of information tables for various organizations and agencies providing services to kids, both special needs and typically-developing.

All for free. Even the food.

And, amazingly enough, given the amount of stimulation available and the target audience, I only saw one kid having a melt down, which is pretty good for any event like this.

This pony ride was the best one yet. For one thing, it involved helmets and signed waivers, which made me sort of wonder about the others ones, but also the saddles had multiple sets of stirrups, including one at Peeper-length.

Between her feet being more or less anchored, and her greatly increased willingness to hold on to the saddle horn, I was a lot more confident that she was going to stay on for the whole ride, and only held onto her waistband, rather than keeping both hands wrapped around her the whole time.







Friday, September 24, 2010

Daily Peep: Helping With Dishes

I'm pretty sure this has got to be some sort of health code violation.



Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Daily Peep: Follow Up

She's scraped up pretty good on her chinny-chin-chin, but other than that, seems none the worse for the wear.



Monday, September 20, 2010

Daily Peep: Stumblina

Disclaimer for Anonymama: She's fine.

This evening, I was out on the patio, watering my $6 tomatoes ($9.99 topsy turvy planter + half a bag of potting soil + one tomato plant = two freakin' tomatoes) and bell peh-puhs, while Peeper was bopping around and doing her thing.

Just as I got on my tippy toes and streeeetched to pour the water into the top of the planter I heard a SLAP and turned to see Peeper on her hands and um, face?! on the brick step that leads into the house.

There was that moment of silence in which she decided whether she was hurt, and then the wail of pain when she realized that she was.

After a split second of "What the fuck?!?" I dropped my watering can, ran over and scooped her up.

As I always do when she falls faceward, my first move was to flip her over and check to see if she'd done herself any damage.

She looked fine, so I breathed a small sigh of relief as I took her over to the couch to nurse. As I was getting myself ready, and she was lying in my lap crying, I tried to get a closer look, to make sure I'd not missed anything, when she opened her mouth and I saw blood.

Blooooood!

Okay, not tons of it, but any blood in mah baybee's mouth is way too much for me. I couldn't tell where it was coming from, but what I saw was sort of pooled under her upper lip and around her gum and teeth.

Oh fuck. This is what I get for bitching so much about those fucking caps. Now she's probably knocked them right out of her head!

By that point, she'd latched on, and I knew that whatever was bleeding, the pressure she was putting on it while nursing would probably help, and the milk itself would clean out any wound, and it was definitely calming her down, so I carried her to the fridge to get Bo-Bo Bear (a flexible ice pack with a picture of a polar bear on it) then to my chair, where I sat down to wait for her to finish, all the while imagining what sort of destruction I might find when I finally got a chance to actually get a good look inside her mouth.

She seemed interested in playing with Bo-Bo Bear, so I figured that was a good sign, and before long, she was tickling me (stopping long enough to say "Tika tika tika" then going back to nursing) and "hiding" under my shirt, so I figured she was probably past the worst of it.

When she finished nursing, I looked in her mouth and saw . . . nothing out of the ordinary.

I couldn't find any evidence of any sort of injury.

I checked her teeth, gums, tongue, everywhere, and still saw nothing.

Whew!

Later, I did notice that she's got a couple of red marks on her face, one of which looks like it might turn off a little more bruisey by morning.

They actually look worse in the photo than they do in real life.


I figure she hit the edge of the step, along the line shown here:


See?


Oh, and the blood? I'm thinking it came from this teeny dot of a possibly injured place on her lip. It's the only thing I can see that looks like it might have bled recently.


You can tell that it's really bothering her.


As usual, she recovered a lot more quickly than I did.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Daily Peep: Cousin Time

Shrike's aunt and uncle (her mom's brother and wife) have recently moved back to the area (they had been living a couple of hours away) and this evening they invited everyone over for a cookout in their new back yard.

These photos of Peeper were taken while she was playing with her ten-year-old cousin.

She kind of adores her.













Friday, September 17, 2010

Daily Peep: Spooky Shopping

Target has all their Halloween stuff out now, so Peeper and I checked it out this evening.

I loooooove you . . .


. . . light up skull!


That's my girl!


Oh yeah, and this.








Do you think she likes it?