19 months old- already! Leah is losing all baby-ness about her and definitely an active toddler! She is adding a few words a week to her cute little vocabulary such as mommy, stuck, duck, shoes, toes, bubbles (which she confuses for water), da-da, woof, and makes a "vroom" sound for motorcycle. We are starting to try and play with a baby-doll during playtime to try and get her used to having a baby around. We use words like gentle ALOT and hopefully she will be fully "big-sister" trained by the time the new baby arrives this fall. Leah is learning some new habits such as climbing and standing on furniture. How can you be mad when you turn around and see her sitting so nicely on this kitchen chair, paging through a magazine? She is up on the Hollywood news for sure! She definitely has an idea of what she wants to do. It mostly involves the word "Elmo or Bob". Although Leah will NOT sit down to watch a movie on the tv, she WILL sit in front of Youtube watching little video clips of Veggie Tales or Elmo's World. When we are finished or say, no to her requests, she throws quite the trantrum. Hopefully this phase will pass...a strong willed child is a GOOD thing, later in life right?
We have added a new toy to the VB house - a play kitchen for Leah! This is with hopes that she will extend her attention span to more than a few seconds and also maybe it will teach her valuable life skills. I know that I have probably spent longer playing with the new kitchen than making real food in my own. Whoops.
I apologize for not posting a bunch of pictures lately...as many of you know, Leah is BUSY. She doesn't sit still for more than a few seconds and it makes picture taking very difficult! Her friend Rogue comes over about once a week to play and we have tried many times for that "perfect" photo op. This is Rogue running away from the chair and Leah is doing summersaults on the chair. They are EVERYWHERE. They have HILARIOUS dance parties and I promise to get a video to post of moshing 1 year olds.
I was delighted and a bit saddened when I picked this pig-tail girl up from school yesterday - her teachers LOVE to style her hair and she kept her pig tails in all day long! They say that she twirls them around her finger. We're all convinced she will be a girly girl. She also steals jewelry from who ever she can and walks around very proudly displaying it.
Leah is certainly a ball of energy, we try to come up with new ways to exert this so she will sleep well at night - sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I especially like her exibiting the baby sign for "more" when I tell her to jump more. She is picking up more and more signs - some are a bit skewed, but we eventually figure out what she is trying to communicate.
Oh thank heaven for summer! There are so many fun things going on in the VB house lately!! Rick installed a cute little bike seat for Leah and they've been taking little rides here and there- mostly to watch the fountains aka "bubbles" in Royal Park Condos. We rode to my parent's for Sunday dinner this week and apparently, the ride was very soothing and relaxing for the passenger.
Leah has started to take an interest in the "potty". She is demonstrating this interest by taking off her pants / diaper at random times throughout the day. We decided it was time to get her her own potty, but she hasn't quite caught on that she needs to actually stay seated for a duration of time. But...when does she stay seated at all anyways? We aren't pushing it, but I think it's a step in the right direction.
