some 26.5 month updates

It's not nearly time for another update - but Esme has spurted a little lately and I don't want to forget when these happened.

Her new favorite words are 'cute' and 'heavy'. She's got a weird identification for 'cute' - but she is using 'heavy' correctly. I've heard her say 'my chair' and 'my cup'. She likes the words 'clock' and 'watch' and will find the watch card in her memory game and try to 'count' the numbers on the face (which aren't there in the picture... kind of odd). She found an old watch that still has it's indiglo nightlight working - and she knows how to push the button to turn it on. I've heard her call me Mama sometimes, usually when I'm not in close enough range and/or eyesight to see her signals or be grabbed by the pantsleg. But, she calls me Daddy sometimes too when I'm in close range 'Daddy hold this.' etc etc...

We've been having some "deep" conversations about things. I think she understands much more now than just a few months ago. I tried to tell her I went in the truck to town the other day to go to work - and that at work people come in who don't have bathtubs. Mama helps them get bathtubs to take back to their houses and then they put the bathtub in their bathroom and they take baths in them. She listened hard - not sure how much she understood but her expression was thoughtful and she didn't try to change the subject.

I've seen her 'counting' with her fingers much more, numbers on machines we have around the house, on clocks, layers on our dehydrator machine, blocks stacked up and also sometimes counting by the 'cup' 'cup' 'cup' or 'doggie doggie' method where she just says the word the number of times. She knows several of her colors now and will say it sometimes as she hands you the right one.

The other night we were watching the episode of the Muppet Show where all the characters get copied into Pig form and are locked up while their Pig counterparts are running the show. During the 'Veterinarians Hospital' where there is usually Rolf the dog in the middle of Miss Piggy and Janice there was a pig doctor. Esme looks up from her playing and says 'Where's the Doggie?' and said it a few times before she said 'It's a PIG.' That was funny! We were playing memory game later. She can match the pictures but doesn't like to play the game the way it is 'supposed' to be played. She kept handing me cards to put on her belly and say what they were - then she would pick them up, look, and go 'mmm hmmm..' and throw it aside. I decided to tell her the dragon was a doggie - just to see what she would do. She looked at the dragon, looked at me oddly, turned over the card, looked at me again and said 'Where doggie??' She was mad - and I told her I was joking. Can't pull the wool over her eyes ;)

Some of her other favorite things to do are to throw her blocks all out of a box, or stack them all up while playing with me. Then she balances a cup on the top of it and pretends to take a sip out of the cup. Not sure where this came from. She made a lego form that looked like a rectangle with a long tower in the middle of it - and told me that it was a drink cup.

Also, much more attached to her Mr.Frog - she carries him, throws him, fights with him when she's mad about going to bed... even gives him 'drinks' from her cup if I ask if he is thirsty.

At the moment I am being handed the play money I printed out for her a long time ago and being told the numbers. haha and she found the old wallet we bought her for her 2 year birthday and wants me to put the money in it. Now she brings me her jacket and says 'outside.' I told her we'll go buy groceries tomorrow at the snap-snap :)

Water in the pipes and Memory Game

This was so cool today I had to share. We were doing our regular bathtime thing but - because it has been freezing cold out here - I left the water in the tub trickling after the bath to keep the pipes from freezing.

I was leaning against the tub and heard the water in the pipes gurgling. I said 'wow' and showed Esme what I was doing in an exaggerated fashion - told her the water was in there too (inside the tub wall) and I could hear it with my ear. She took a minute of 'what are you DOING mom?' and then she tried it. The look in her eyes was amazing. WOW WOW WOW she was so happy she tried what Mom did and discovered something. I got hugs and kisses as well as jumping up and down and 'I did it WOW'

She has also been asking for her 'Memory' game now. She finally thinks it's cool and not just as a large pile of things to throw around. She asks us what the pictures are and identifies some now in between the throwing around ;) She hates to put it away, but has asked to play with it a few days in a row. I remember I bought it when she was about 16 months old from Ebay hoping she would like it then (as she was in to puzzles then) and she wasn't very interested in matching the pictures or even identifying them then.

Esme at 26 months

She can finally jump with both feet and 'get air.' She can go up and down the stairs without much worry from me.. but I still like to be somewhere downhill of her just in case. She can take off her shirt and is working at pulling her pants up and down. She can drink from a straw well and carry the cup from surface to surface without it necessarily ending in cleanup. She is talking so much more than ever before - although sometimes I still wish we could understand each other better.

She knows all the letters of the alphabet but will still get mixed up with lowercase 'l' and uppercase 'I' on her Starfall games. She can navigate half of the arrow-key maze on one of the games before she gets frustrated, tell me where the letters go in the 'make a word' puzzles that have all the letters up top in different shapes and the shapes down below they go into, play the match games with me on-screen (point to where she saw it last and is usually right) etc... I am amazed and happy she loves the site so much. She is also working on her numbers and colors more but without as much interest. She is very interested in letters: The other day she actually took Daddy's books off the shelf (big no no) just so she could name off the letters on the covers to me.

Mark got a new remote control truck off of the Christmas clearance aisle. Esme loves it - says 'car! car!' and demanded to be shown how it works. She can make it go forward but then goes and runs to get it and turns it around instead of using reverse. She keeps looking for the button on the car that would make it run around like her zhu zhu hamster, but then remembers the handheld device and makes it go using that. She was playing with the steering on it but couldn't get both the steering wheel and the accelerator at the same time in her little hands.

Last night I had my mom on speakerphone and Esme had the phone walking around the room. My mom asked Mark if he was going to go outside and play in the new snow. He said 'No' very loudly and Esme put the phone facedown on the bed and shook her finger at it. Daddy had said the phone was bad - and she was 100% certain she wasn't in trouble, but the phone was - so it needed a timeout. She still doesn't entirely 'get' how the phone talks - but is much more willing to think it is a person now than a toy.

Now this morning we've already had tea with our stuffed frog (he ate teacakes and a car.. so yummy).. She has also offered a notebook to her 'mommy and daddy' dollhouse dolls and asked them to draw with her. That didn't work like she had planned - so now she is back to Mommy asking me to get a pen out of a drawer she can see but not reach - so she can draw with me. Now that I'm typing she is over at the bed showing Mark how well she can draw and asking him to draw with her. Also all of the white crayons out of her box are on my desk... I think she wants them fixed because they 'don't draw.' haha

I originally had to go to work at 10 today but they changed it last minute yesterday. I have to go in at 12:30 and then I have the weekend off. I feel I've been making a habit of looking scruffy lately - winter weather, very little time to get ready in the mornings, laundry being a hassle so I do the minimum necessary etc... so I did some 'me' stuff after getting home last night and hope to get my hair trimmed up this weekend. They went through some 'confidence' and interview stuff at the beginning of our managerial training yesterday and it kicked me a little higher into gear.


Esme drawing with pen - I circled the part Daddy did but the rest is hers