Notice that she kept trying to put the napkin around her neck. She's been doing that a lot lately with things like napkins, washcloths, blankets, spare items of clothing etc., and for awhile I couldn't figure out where she learned to do that. Then I realized she watches me put scarves on a lot. Wow, pretty clever, at least I thought so!
And speaking of clothing, she's getting very interested in clothing fasteners, like buttons, Velcro, and zippers. Especially zippers. If I pick her up and I'm wearing a zippered hoodie (which I am about 75% of the time) I can count on it being completely unzipped in just a few seconds. If she's wearing a zippered hoodie, it'll be completely unzipped in just a few seconds, and she'll take it off too. She's definitely getting this concept of "clothes" figured out. She helps get herself dressed by holding out her arms for sleeves and lifting her feet for pants/socks/stockings, and does the reverse when it's time to get undressed. Diaper changes, surprisingly, usually aren't a hassle. She sometimes tries to help by pulling up on the new diaper until it's in place! I'm just glad that she hasn't figured out how to take the diaper off yet. :)
She's getting better about feeding herself with a fork or spoon, depending on what she's eating. She still needs help getting food onto the utensil - when she tries she basically just pats the food down in the bowl. Still working on learning how to scoop. She'll get it eventually. She's also getting better with talking. Still basically the same words but she's using words more and in better context, it seems like. I'm noticing that if I ask her a yes/no question she'll actually respond with "Ya!" or what looks like a head shake, and she seems to understand what she's doing. Last week she woke up in the middle of the night and I was taking awhile to drag myself out of bed, but while I was hauling myself to her room I noticed that instead of crying she was calling out, "Maaamaaa! Maaamaaa!" And when that didn't work, "Daaadaaa! Daaadaaa!" A few nights ago we had some people over and twice in a row when someone walked in the door she waved and said, "Hi!" She's very good about pointing at something that she wants, which I take as a learning opportunity to teach a new word. Yesterday she was pointing at the TV and I asked her if she wanted to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. She got really excited and started dancing (she dances to the song that they sing at the end of the show). This language acquisition stuff is pretty cool and exciting!
She's also gotten very curious about her belly button. I don't know what it is about belly buttons but they sure are fascinating! So when she's taking a bath or we're getting her dressed or whatever I ask her where her belly button is, and now when I ask her she tries to find hers! I'm also working on asking her where her feet are but she's not as interested in those.
She's doing a little better at walking every day! She still prefers to crawl because it's faster and more stable but every day she'll walk a little more often, and without waiting for us to coax her. She's also quite a little monkey. She's trying to climb everything - over her toys, on top of the dogs to climb onto the couch, and then climb to the top of the couch to look out the window, on top of the shoe rack... you get the idea. She was doing all this climbing before she could walk. So one of her nicknames now is Little Monkey. We bought a second carseat to go in Mark's vehicle so we're not constantly switching around the one that we have in my car. We set it down on the floor and she thought this was the best jungle gym ever! She did, unfortunately, tip over a couple of times, but I'd pick her up, she'd stop crying, and want to get down to climb some more. I guess she didn't learn her lesson very well. Mark says that when he was little he tried to climb a lot too and his outlet was gymnastics, so I guess we'll see where this goes...
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| Is Mom watching? |
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| If I don't see Mom, she can't see me! |
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| Wow, the view is so much better up here! |
Last week Mark and I went skiing at the Canyons in Park City. Neither of us had been to that resort before so it was neat to try that out. I didn't know this, but apparently the Canyons is the largest ski resort in Utah and second largest in the country (Vail, Colorado is the largest). It really was huge! I lost count of all the lifts, and we were only able to ski about a third of the resort, and we were there all day. I think a resort that large you'd really only get your money's worth by getting a season pass. I really enjoyed it, and I even did some moguls! Not big ones, and the run wasn't very steep, but hey, I skied moguls and didn't even fall! Big confidence boost there. Unfortunately I think we're at the end of the season. There's plenty of snow at the resorts but it's that slushy icy spring snow crud. Well at least we were able to get a few ski days in. Maybe we should save up and buy season passes for next year.
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| Mark and me at Canyons |
And now for some big news... I'm still being cautious about this because I'm worried it's a fluke but it's happened several times in a row so I think it's safe... Mira has been putting herself to sleep! Mark was putting her to bed a couple weeks ago and put her in bed awake. We waited for her to scream but she never did. So that's how we figured out she'd go to sleep on her own if Mark put her down. But she's a Mommy's girl and is still really attached to me (although it's getting a lot better) so I was nervous about trying it with her. One night last week she was awake for hours at night - I don't know if it was teething or a growth spurt or what but we just could not get her back to sleep. So finally I got frustrated and set her down in the crib and walked out. I told Mark I'd let her cry for a little while so she'd get worn out and then go in to her. We waited and waited and waited.... Nothing. She'd put herself to sleep! And since then I've found that if I start rocking her to sleep and get her so that she realizes she's tired, I can put her in the crib almost completely awake, walk out, and I won't hear a peep from her. Even for naptime, which I was worried about because, you know, it's daytime and more stuff goes on during the day, same thing. Isn't that awesome??? I was so worried about how I was going to get her out of this habit of only falling asleep when she's held and then having to put her to bed completely asleep. I foresaw an epic battle of the wills and lots of crying and screaming... But no, she did it all on her own! Amazing! I'm really excited about this one. Sleep has been one of the biggest stressors for me and I kept regretting that I hadn't taught Mira sooner how to fall asleep on her own - but it turns out that she taught herself. Now if we could just get her to stop waking up in the middle of the night... Although maybe that will get better now that she's learning to put herself to sleep. I find that I don't sleep as well at night because I keep waking up wondering if she was crying, and I'd like to get back to sleeping through the night again.
I just had to include these pictures because they're so cute. Neo, one of our cats, always sleeps outside Mira's room when she's sleeping, even during the day when she's napping. It's like he's guarding the door. He's such a dog. (We have to block the door with the laundry hamper, otherwise the dogs push the door open and sniff around and otherwise make noise that results in Mira waking up.)
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