Addie at 20 Months

It's hard to believe that Addie is already 20 months old.  She will be turning two years old before we know it!

Some of Addie's favorite things to do right now are going to the park, playing outside, playing with Dakota, reading, doing puzzles, matching, painting, coloring, drawing, stacking blocks, and lining up all her stuffed animals and dolls to feed them, read to them, and put them down for naps. She has mastered her shape sorter, geometric blocks, and her favorite matching game. She is all about Biscuit books right now, as well as Winnie the Pooh and Dora the Explorer. She has a Winnie the Pooh DVD that she asks to watch at least three times a day. She also loves animals and wants to go visit the kittens at our neighbor's house everyday.

I can't believe how many words she has learned in the past month. It seems like everyday she says a new word that we haven't even tried to teach her. The other day I came home from the store with a grocery bag, and she pointed and said, "grosh" (groceries).  I have no idea how she learned the word groceries other than she must have heard me saying it to Jay! She can easily repeat any one syllable word, but has a little trouble with two or more syllables...she usually just truncates or abbreviates into one syllable.  Instead of trying to say "Dakota," she just calls him "Ko."

She points to objects in books when we name them, and can also tell us what is in a picture when we ask what she sees. She loves looking at animal books and can name quite a few - cow, horse, donkey, tiger (grrr), lion, goat, sheep (baaaa), dog, cat, fish, and pig.  She is also getting good at her colors and can name pink, blue, yellow, orange, and green.  She can recognize and point to black, red, white, and purple.  She thinks she can count, but no matter how many objects there are when we ask her to count something she says there are two :)

She loves to help around the house, especially transferring clothes from the washer to the dryer and unloading the dishwasher - she does the silverware and the tupperware.  She also loves to sweep. She is so good at following directions...Jay sometimes uses this to his advantage - "Addie, take Dada's socks and go put them in the hamper."  And she replies, "Sure!" and happily takes them and dumps them in the hamper. But it comes out like, "Shhhuuurre" with a huge inflection in her voice. She doesn't say "yes;" she says "sure."  It's the cutest thing.  Even if she is mad or upset about something...like the other day she wanted to watch TV before bed and I told her no.  She started protesting and got upset and started crying. I asked if she would like to read books instead, and she said in a shaky voice, "sure."  She had been very good at saying "no" to everything (even when she meant yes), but saying "yes" was hard for her, so we taught her to say ''sure" instead.

She loves to hug and kiss everyone when saying good-bye.  Everyday when Jay and I leave for work, she says "hugs" and "kiss."  Whenever Ashly leaves at the end of the day she asks for hugs and kiss.  At the beach over Christmas there was a nice couple that we had met and visited with for a minute or two.  Then we decided to continue walking down the beach.  The couple said bye to Addie, so Addie ran up to them saying, "hugs, kiss."  Guess we'll have to work on the whole concept of strangers soon! :)

Time is flying by so quickly. She is learning new things all the time and is becoming quite the amazing little lady!