And so it begins??

Picture No. 1 - Judith on the potty!

Obviously, she's not "going" on the potty, since she's sitting on it fully clothed. Yesterday I got it out of the garage, washed it off, and brought it in. She was quite interested in it, and wanted to sit on it (with her book!) but wasn't nearly as happy when I tried it without her pants on. I think part of the problem she has with it is that it's just slightly too high for her to get on for herself. And she likes to be able to sit down herself.

I got it out in the first place because of my new dilemma about diapers. Judith is still, for the most part, in cloth diapers, but she wets through them all the time, and as a result she's getting a nasty rash around her leg where the wet diaper cover rubs against her. I have stuff to put on the rash, and I check her constantly, so that she isn't wet for very long, but the rash doesn't really seem to be getting much better. The only time it improves noticeably is when she wears disposables for a day or so. But disposables are so expensive! (Although, given how much more frequently I have to do the laundry both for the diapers and the covers, it might be closer to equaling out cost-wise.) So I thought "what about potty training?" And I took the first step by getting the potty chair out of the garage (incidentally, we have a second potty chair as well - both hand-me-downs) that might be a better height, I'll have to get it out and check. I did check into some websites with potty-training hints, and I'm not entirely sure that Judith's really ready to be trained yet. The biggest "miss" on the list of "signs of readiness" is a "dislike of being wet or dirty". Pretty much she'd much rather not have her diaper changed ever, so I figure she's not feeling and dislike of the dirtiness. We'll see. For now she can sit on it when she likes, and occasionally I'll put her on it with no pants, and see what happens. (There's really no rush, except for my diaper-dilemma.)

The second picture is of Judith enjoying a new toy - she got this stroller today from Julia, who we walk with. When we got home from our walk, I opened it for her, and she spent the next half hour (at least) pushing Donald around. She did occasionally alternate with her car, but she kept returning to the stroller. Even the offer of lunch didn't distract her! Apparently it's a big hit.

talking, sleeping, playing

The biggest news to report: Judith started saying "Gamma" (finally) yesterday morning. I was sitting at the computer, and she came up, as she often does, asking to see pictures on the screen. Most often, she asks to see "nay nay" (our friend Nathan), but this time she was clearly asking to see Grandma. So I found pictures of all three grandmas, and she had fun pointing them out and saying "Gamma."

The sleep thing is still pretty up in the air. Our one trial day with no nap went fine during the day, and she went to sleep almost immediately an hour before her normal bedtime - but she was up two hours earlier than normal the next day, and was super crabby all morning until naptime. So I don't think we'll be trying that again. I've pretty much just decided that I'll put her down around noon, and wake her up if she doesn't fall asleep in time to wake up naturally before carpool time.

Here are the two recent pictures: she spent some time with Lance yesterday while he was playing games on the computer - I like how it looks like she's telling him where to go/what to do (too bad you can't see what's on the screen).
And here's a picture of her playing with some items from her tea set this morning. She often asks to sit in a specific chair, and since I was working in the computer room, she chose to sit in Lance's computer chair. She balanced the little cup on the arm of the chair kind of by accident, and I congratulated her on doing it. Then she spent the next 10 minutes or so trying to balance the tea pot as well.

a new kitchen, friends, and a big mess

It's been a relatively eventful last two days.

Yesterday morning some good friends brought over a kitchenette for Judith. It arrived during her lunch, and immediately she wanted to get down and play with it. I explained that she couldn't get down right now because she was eating...and she said "Done!" :-) During her nap I also got out the tea set and other "kitchen" toys she had recently received as hand-me-downs from her cousins. She has had a great time playing with them - especially the spoons and cups. She walks around the house giving "bites" to Lance and me, as well as all her stuffed animals. She also really likes to open and shut the "microwave" and "oven" doors. (Thanks Chris and Traci!)



Last night we went to FLG. Dillenders were hosting it, and we got there a little earlier than the rest of the people, so we got to have some time hanging out with just them. Judith loves playing with Camryn - here's a picture of them together.


Today I was on the phone with a friend, and then went into the computer room for awhile. Lately Judith's been playing by herself throughout the house (a very nice change from having her stand right next to me saying "up" all day), and for the most part I haven't had to worry about her. As I sat at the computer, I could hear her swishing something around on the floor in the hall, but I figured she was just "sweeping"one her toys. Nope...this is what I saw when I came out:
She had gotten into my container of chocolate wafer crumbs, and was having a riot spreading them all over! (Ok, this is really my fault for leaving the crumbs where she could reach them, even if I didn't think she could open the container.) Think she's ready for a sand box? (Incidentally, I know it would have been a much better picture to leave her in the middle of the crumbs, but I wasn't going to risk that.)

Thursday

We're trying a new schedule for Judith - not that I expect her to really keep a schedule, but this is a major change, because we've cut out her afternoon nap. It feels way too early to be cutting it out, but it's been super hard to get her to go to sleep, both at naptime and at night (it takes about an hour each time). And naptime is further complicated because she transitioned from a morning nap to an afternoon nap (the girl that I drive carpool for had minimum days the week before Christmas, and we had to be picking her up in the middle of Judith's nap, so I just kept her up until after), which worked fine during the holidays, but now, if she doesn't get to sleep by 1:00, I have to wake her up to go drive the carpool. So we decided to see if it works. Today was the first day, and she didn't really seem to notice not napping, although she was a little crabby if things weren't going her way by about 6:30 p.m., and we put her down for the night at 7:15 (normal bedtime has been more like 8:15). She didn't complain at all about going down early, and she's not making the normal nighttime play-in-the-crib sounds. We'll see how it goes.

Here are anecdotes and pictures from the last two days:

We got a package from Grandma and Grandpa Sjoerdsma last night with "The Foot Book" and the stuffed "character" from the story. Judith was immediately interested in the stuffed toy - we've named him "Donald" and then wanted to sit down and read the book while holding him. Note that you can see the book's dust jacket on the floor in the background, because she really doesn't think they're necessary and the first thing she does to any jacketed book is pull it off :-). Today she's been carrying Donald around all day, saying "Dono" over and over.

This morning I was doing some baking and I crouched down to reach into the back of the cupboard to get out the whole wheat flour. It's the same cupboard that I used to pull chocolate chips out of for Judith (the chocolate chips are now all gone). She remembered and got very excited...she came running to me, saying "caca!, caca!" (that's how she says chocolate). She was so excited that I got out some other chocolate and gave her a piece: notice that she enjoyed it very much! (The other food on her face is apricot jelly because right before that she insisted on having bites of my toast.)

During our walk this afternoon, Judith decided to take both Tigre and Bear to ride with her in the stroller - it's very crowded that way! They were both sort of held in place on her lap (unless we were going down hill) by the afghan that was wrapped around her legs, so she had her hands free to play with them. She discovered that her hood was big enough to pull around in front of her face, and she had a great time playing peek-a-boo with Tigre and Bear by hiding behind the hood and then moving it away from her face. (Sorry, no picture here - I don't take the camera on my walks.)

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.