Costume Pics

Here are some pics I took from the church halloween party tonight. The other little girl is Ryleigh, the girl I watch during the week. Linda is dressed as a cat, and Ryleigh is dressed as a mouse. How cute! Linda had a great time. They had a soup/chili dinner and then had a carnival. Linda was pinning the tail on the cat, bowling w/pumpkins, ring toss onto the spider, trying to eat a marshmellow suspended from the air w/just your hands, and doing a cupcake walk (numbers all in a square and you walk while the music is playing. when music stops you stand on a number, and they call numbers out. if they call yours, you get a cupcake.) They had prizes at each game too, so the kids loved that. They also had doors in the church decorated, and the kids could go trick or treating to each door. It was a fun time. Linda of course was wound up, and didn't get into bed at her normal time. It's 8:45pm right now, and I still hear her in her room singing. On the way home from the church she was talking about all the games she played. They also had face painting. Linda got a flower painted on her hand. Tomorrow our street is having a get together before trick or treating, so we will be going to that as well. Happy Halloween everyone!

It's Almost Halloween

Linda is going to be a cat this year, thanks to our friend Kristen, who gave her a costume. Linda went to a halloween party yesterday at JW Tumbles. It cost $5, and it benefited Make a Wish Foundation. She was able to use their gym and play. Of course she loved that. I turned around to find her 1/2 way up their rock wall. She also got her hand painted. She chose a blue pumpkin to be painted on her hand.


She has been reading in a couple books more now. I'll point my finger at the word and she will read it. Today before nap she said to me, "you aren't reading these words, I am." So I think she may start to like reading the books herself more. Last night she was reading the sentence, "some kids dance, and some kids sing." She saw the word sing and said "dog." For some reason if she sees a word w/a g in it, she will assume it's the word dog. So I took a second to try to explain how sentences in a book need to make sense. They just aren't random words. And we repeated the sentence to say, "some kids dance, and some kids dog." Hopefully she could see (which I think she might be too young for this) that "some kids dog" doesn't make sense. After we determined the word wasn't dog, she sounded it out and was able to read the word sing. when she is reading words in the books herself, she does get distracted easily, so we just do a page or two at a time.

We have a halloween party tonight we are attending, so I hope to get a picture of her in her costume up here.

Update

Here we are again. It's been over a year since I've blogged about Linda. I can't believe it has been that long! Linda turned 2 1/2 in September. I figured I would start up again, as it's a nice way for our friends and family to know her day to day, or week to week life. I'll try to get on here at least once a week. Please post comments, so I know someone is reading! lol

Today we went to our local farm for their harvest festival. This picture was taken on Tuesday of this week. Linda had such a good time, she wanted to come back today w/daddy. Today was no different from Tuesday. She wanted to be w/those silly chickens almost the whole time! She caught another chicken today too. She gets so proud when she catches one. It was cute today b/c she would take the chicken to the other kids coming in and out so they could have a chance to pet and look at it. She also enjoyed the bounce houses very much. She tired herself out for sure. Thankfully she was so busy in the petting farm and bounce houses, we didn't get a chance to ride the overpriced carnival rides.

Linda has developed into quite an amazing little girl. She got out of diapers in early June except at nap and bed, yippee! She is very physically strong. We bought a swing set the end of this summer. It has a rope ladder and some other climbing things. That kid went right up every thing the first try. She likes to jump off stuff, and so somersaults, and flip upside down on everything, and just be crazy. I would like to get her into some sort of tumbling or gymnastics class as she is quite co ordinated. She seems to enjoy sports as well, again yippee! We still can't determine which handed she will be. She is still using each hand equally.

And of course, she is very smart as well. We started working on writing her name. She can do the L and the i quite easily, as they are pretty easy letters to write. She can do the n. Sometimes it's hard to know it's an n, unless it is near the L and the i, lol. We started working on the d. I think that may take some time. I'm not sure she has the fine motor skills at her age to do it, but she is practicing. She can also write several other letters.

One thing we are pretty excited about is she is now reading. It is really amazing to see her read a word. Some words she knows by sight now. About a week ago Tom and I were sitting and we showed her the word run. I knew she did not know this word by sight. It was so cool to see and hear her sound out each letter, and then put the sounds all together to form the word. She has read some four letter words as well. She obviously still has such a long way to go before even reading a book. As you can imagine, we are just so proud of her. I have been trying different things to keep it fun for her. We went on a word scavenger hunt the other day. We walked around the neighborhood and found words that she could read. Since she loves sidewalk chalk, I wrote a bunch of words in the driveway. I would show her a word and say, "This word is something we wear on our heads." The word was hat, and she would read the word. We did several like that. She doesn't seem to like that as much as hunting for words. Any other suggestions would be welcomed.

I guess that is about all from here. Please check in from time to time and leave some comments so I know you are out there!

Thank You and Days of the Week

I heard the sweetest sound today (besides Linda saying "I love you.") We just got home and I was taking Linda out of the car seat. She said, as normal, out please. I took her out and put her down and she looked up at me and said thank you. I was so excited. This is the first time she has said it w/o prompting. It was so sweet.

I have been trying to come up w/new things to teach Linda while she finishes up learning to recognize letters (she knows over 1/2) and numbers (she only knows 1 and 8, we need to work on that). So I started telling her the days of the week. I had been telling her on our walk in the morning. A few days ago, I asked her to tell me what the days of the week are. Before I would just tell her. I had been telling her for about a week. After I asked her she said "monday tuesday." I helped her w/the rest. Then Tom and I were having breakfast w/Linda. Tom asked when our friends were getting home from their trip. I said I think they get back on Monday. W/o skipping a beat, Linda said "tuesday". It is amazing that they are listening to everything you say.

She has started counting objects. It started w/her fingers. And now she will count other things too. I've been encouraging this obviously. It is so cute when she counts her fingers. She also will bust out w/her ABCs for no apparant reason. I just can't believe how smart she is, and how fast she understands. She seems to understand everything I tell her. If I tell her to do something, she will do it. She really is amazing.

It's been a while!

I can't believe it's been about a month since I posted. Linda has been very busy in the last month. We took a visit to Grandma and Grandpa's house. We spent time w/Aunt Debbie, Aunt Kelly, Uncle Tim, Morgan and Collin. Linda loved Collin and Morgan. They all played so good together. We got home and she was asking for Collin for days!

Linda likes to "ride cock horse." The is putting her at the end of your leg and bouncing her up and down to a tune. The other day she went up to Copper (the dog) and said, "ride cock horse." She then attempted to climb on him. It was too funny.

She is really enjoying the pool now. She asks to go in it all the time now. I'm glad b/c she was so timid about it in the beginning of the season. The water has been so warm, so I think that helps too.

Linda seems to have had another language explosion. She is using quite a few two and three word sentences now. Before she would use a sentence once in a while, but now it is frequent. Today she brought a book to me and said "read the book please." She finally called a pineapple the right name. Before it was always just apple.

It is amazing how her mind works. The fact that she talks so good is amazing, but her understanding of concepts is even more amazing. She was in the car today and I hear her saying, "up, down, up, down." I look back and she is pushing her self up and then letting her self down. She understands both words, and knows they are related to each other. Pretty amazing for a 16 month old. She also knows off/on, in/out, hot/cold, open/closed.

I'm going to try to post every day or so again. It's hard to get back in the habit.

Alphabet

Today was a pretty uneventful day. We actually didn't go anywhere until dinner time. We were supposed to go to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, but the temps were in the 90s today. Since I try not to put sunscreen on Linda, I def didn't want to be out at 11am in that heat. I got some stuff done around the house and we went swimming after nap. She did really good in the pool today. Her new thing is to go up and down the pool stairs. She likes doing that and splashing.

Missy called and so we went to dinner at Friendly's. On the way home from Friendly's we were practicing our alphabet. I said "A" she said "A, B" I said "B" she said "C", etc all the way to L! After she said L she said P. So I took her back to M. She correctly to U, skipped V and said W. So I corrected her and she went to Z correctly. So she said the entire alphabet by herself except for 2 letters! I couldn't believe it! I thought that was so good for 15 months.

She is ready for bed so off I go!

Camping

This picture is not from camping, but it is a recent pic.

Well this weekend we went camping. Things started out kind of rough. Linda missed her nap and then had a diaper rash. She was crying in pain, for what I thought was no apparent reason. It was very strange. When I finally figured out the problem, she calmed right down. It was like she relaxed b/c she knew I knew what the problem was. I'm not sure what she ate to make her poop so acidic. She doesn't sit in her diaper.

Her memory is so amazing. Lynn came w/us and Cody, her dog, hopped out. Linda immediately said "Cody." It had been about a month since she had seen Cody, and she doesn't see him all that much, but she remembered. She is also amazing the way she thinks abstractly. We went down to the beach and played down there. When we came back I changed her diaper and said "oh you have sand in your pants." She looked at me and said "beach." I can't believe she remembers all these words we tell her only once or twice and remembers there is sand and it is at the beach. She was real good w/the fire. I was worried she would try to touch it. We told her hot and not to go near it, and she did not try to go near it one time. She is so good w/her hot and cold now too. When we got home she was walking barefoot on the driveway. The sun was beating down on it and she said "hot." She touches stuff that is cold and says cold too. Unbelievable. We were leaving the campground and going up over the bay bridge tunnel. She looked out her window and saw the ocean. She said "lake." I was so impressed w/this. The first time she saw a lake she just said "water." She remembered the lake she saw was big, and she was looking at a big body of water, so it must be a lake. Even though she was wrong, her thinking process is amazing. While we were camping I asked her if she wanted to use her crayons. She said crayons, and then started naming colors. Again, she knows exactly what you are saying much of the time, and can think so well. Amazing. She counted to six today all by herself. Tom said one, she said one, two. So Tom said two. She said three, Tom said three, etc all the way to six. Then she got distracted. I have heard her say eight after I have said seven. She probably does know her numbers all the way to ten. I usually count to 20 w/her. When we were taking walks at the campground we would come across various street signs. Linda loved looking at the letters and saying the ones she knew. She finally called a W correctly. Before if you showed her W, she would say M. She does that sometimes w/V and Y too. She knows a bunch of her letters now. Well that is about all from here. I know I'm missing a bunch of incredible stuff she did this weekend. Her amazing speech has really opened up everything else for her. She talks to me, so I know she is understanding, and I can move on to other stuff once she gets it. She is something people!