Thursday, January 01, 2009

Things I've Done Recently and Esme's Adventures


14 months
Esme 'draw draw' on her sketchpad.
She can find her crayon and draw on the paper when you ask 'Draw Draw?'


I only let her have one crayon in her play area at a time unless we are all drawing together, for obvious reasons. We've gotten her 'soap crayons' for the bathtub which she is also enjoying immensely.

Instead of New Year's Resolutions of things I'd like to do this year, I'm going to list a few things I've actually DONE recently, that I am proud of.

Hopefully they will serve as an inspiration to do more things I've been planning to do.

1.) Put cabinet pulls and a child-proof lock on our cleaning supplies cupboard.
-- also outlet covers over all accessible electrical outlets
2.) Vacuumed the stairs and cleaned quite a bit of the house in the past week.
3.) Knit a mitten (working on the second)
4.) Made several batches of cornbread muffins which we all enjoyed.
5.) Made a queen-sized topper for a quilt (working on the back)
6.) Taken Esme for walks outside four days in a row.
7.) Been more spontaneous with things I want to get done in the house, instead of putting them off until Esme is asleep etc...

I've had Esme outside her play area most of the time this week when I've been home. The play area is the main area of the house we've babyproofed, with all her toys etc. It is fairly safe to leave her there when we have to go downstairs for a few minutes. We have the stairs and lots of equipment she could get hurt on, so I don't let her run around the other parts of the house unless I'm ready to watch her closely. This week I've had her ALL OVER the house with me, everywhere, and pretty much followed her around when we weren't actively involved in doing something. She has brought laundry down with me, seen Daddy load the dishwasher, watched me sweep and scrub the floor, been a participant in getting her milk and food, etc. etc... Today she was running all around our upstairs harrassing the dogs, playing with packing supplies and basically trying to get anything she could reach.

And I've really seen the difference in her. First off, she is SO much more stubborn about wanting to touch and learn about every new thing she finds. She has probably thrown more tantrums in the past three days than in the past month. But there are good things too. She is babbling more - asking about things in her babytalk, interacting and imitating what we do with things, learning to respond to me more by following directions etc... She also has started to push her limits about what Mommy doesn't want her getting into. You can 'see the gears turning' when she has been told 'No' about something before. She starts to reach for it, looks for me, then backs off with either a grin or a rising wail depending on her mood.

Also I've had her outside four days in a row. The other day I picked up a sweet gum ball and just by instinct knocked the seeds out of it on a post before giving it to her. I didn't think she paid any attention to my action, just the object. She looked it over, went over to the post and knocked it on it again 'Is this what we do with this?' Also watching the thinking process as she trades a stick for a rock for an acorn for a bigger stick etc...

I can really see our little girl's personality and mind blossoming ::)

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