Music and More

I feel like I can almost watch Judith changing cognitively at this stage. In the last two weeks, she's begun singing (in tune even!) along with CDs or other music (she's always loved music, but now she REALLY loves it - she'll even play her "keyboard" and sing with that!); she's started putting words together occasionally ; and she obviously understands and connects words and actions to things. Some anecdotes to illustrate:

• She'll say "Bear. Juice. Num Num" as she gives Bear "sips" of her juice.
• Today she brought me one of her little toys that spin (they're actually shape-blocks that go in big snail-thing, but they have a rounded knob on the top, and they make great tops). As she brought it to me, she said "pin", (spin)...and "gain" after I'd done it once.
• This evening, about 15 minutes before Lance came home, she brought me one of her books and said "rea?" I explained that I was making dinner and I couldn't read to her right now. She insisted ("si" "rea" - (sit, read) and so I said I would read it through one time, but that Daddy would be home soon, and he would read it with her. So we sat and read it, and she got down and I went back to cooking and didn't think anything more of it. Except that as soon as Lance came in the door, she said "Daddy! rea!" and brought him the book!

Now, maybe this is all normal for her age (17 months), but to me it's absolutely astonishing to watch her develop. She amazes me every day.

Playing her keyboard book.

watching the "top" spin

reading with Daddy

Peekaboo!

A beautiful first Sunday of the year - I was singing with the band this morning, so Judith and I went with Lance at 8:15 to church. Fortunately, Amanda had agreed to watch Judith during rehearsal, so they got to play together for quite a while. And the weather was gorgeous, so they even got to play outside! Judith also said Camryn's name for the first time this morning. (We are forever grateful for the family we have at River Rock - Judith knows and loves them (and so do we) as if they were blood relations.)

This evening, we had our first-Sunday Life Group dinner, and got to hang out with Nate and Amanda for awhile. Judith had a great time playing peekaboo with Nate - through a semi-transparent blue tupperware lid. Here's the before...and here's her "after" face - sometimes she says "keepoo" and sometimes she says "ha":
At one point she tried it with a non-transparent lid. She didn't like that at all, so she handed it to Nate for him to use instead :-).

Later on, after Nate and Amanda left, Lance and Judith used Tigre and Bear as pillows:

An Ordinary Day

(I have a feeling that I might use that title a lot :-)

Today was just an ordinary Saturday. A few things made it special: Lance wasn't working overtime today and we got to have him home all day. And he even got up and went grocery shopping with Judith and me!

Here's a picture of Judith and Lance playing with the balloon (that's pronounced "broon", with a nice long roll to the "r") that she got at Trader Joe's.

Day One - A Good Start!

New Year's Day - and I'm blogging, as resolved!

Today was pretty great. Judith slept until 8:00, which, considering that she didn't go to bed late or anything, was very unexpected, but quite welcome. Then Renee John and her kids came over to babysit while Lance and I went to see Avatar with Nate and Amanda. Apparently Judith didn't even notice that we were gone! And she took ate lunch AND took a nap! (and the movie was awesome) God is so good!

The Johns stayed for dinner and a movie - here's a picture of Judith playing with Jessica's hair (she - Judith - was pretty enthralled with it).



And a bonus picture of Lance and Judith and the bridge that they built - Judith had great fun walking under it, until she discovered that she could just lift the "bar" right off - at which point she demolished the towers with it.

A New Year

Last year a friend of mine joined Project 365, with the goal of taking a picture a day. (Check out the description of the project at : http://photojojo.com/content/tutorials/project-365-take-a-photo-a-day/). As I looked back over 2009, and regretted how much I didn't blog, I decided to follow her example (Thanks Erin!). I'm not going to officially "join" anything, but I am going to be more proactive about taking pictures and blogging - if not every day, then at least more than once a week.

Like all New Year's Resolutions, this one is made with the best intentions, but we'll see how it goes! Here are some bonus pictures (taken by Denise Marshall) of my beautiful girl to end 2009.

talking!

Yes - it's been months and months since I blogged. What can I say? It just hasn't been a priority. But since this is a huge milestone, I figured I ought to blog it. Judith has begun to talk! Here is her current word list in alphabetical order...I count 46 words so far!

Note that her first word was Daddy, closely followed by hi, ball, balloon, cheese, cracker, banana and up. Her most recent word (as of last night) is "uh-oh" and she adds at least one word a day.

apple
baby
ball
balloon
banana
bath
bear
beep
bib
bonk
bright
bye-bye
car
cheese
cookie
cracker
crawl
cup
Daddy
done
down
drink
ear
eye
gone
Grandma
Grandpa
hair
hi
hot
inside
juice
light
Mama
more (in sign language)
Nay-Nay (a nickname for our friend Nathan)
off
on
outside
Pepe (spanish for pacifier)
pumpkin
shoes
teeth
Tigre (the name of her stuffed tiger)
uh-oh
up

Playtime with Daddy

Lance spends about an hour (or more) every evening playing with Judith. I took some pictures of them playing recently.

Here they're playing with the blocks I made (empty Kleenex boxes covered with contact paper). Lance built the towers; Judith knocked them over (of course!). Most of the time, Lance could hardly put one block on top of another before she smacked them down. But there was one big tower, and I got a shot of the tower falling! (If only it was a little more in focus :-).

Judith is also pretty fascinated by her stuffed animals (all shapes and sizes). Tigre, her stuffed tiger, is her favorite, but she plays with the rest pretty frequently too. Here she and Daddy are stuffing the animals into a plastic container putting the "lid" on, and taking the animals back out. Only Tigre's head fits, but she sure tried to get him in there!