[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Sara
Date: 06 Jun 2007
Time: 00:57:19 -0500
Remote Name: 69.107.66.171
I haven’t written progress for quite some time, and there is quite a lot to mention, so this is going to be a long report. Astrid is an amazing little girl. She’s so little but oh so clever. She amazes me everyday with the things that she’s learning and how these things are forming her world. She loves stories; she can follow movies and books along and loves a good storyline. She will laugh and clap during the parts that are exciting and happy, and frown at the bad parts. She is very animated and extremely dramatic. Her fantasy and play has become very creative and she is interacting with dolls and playing by herself really well. She likes toys with motors, like cars and trucks (‘biggies’), her lawn mower and the all-time favorite … the popcorn popper pusher (annoying for me and Eric but super fun for her, especially on the tile floor so that it’s extra loud). She sings and dances and talks alone and can find amusement with just about anything. I sneak up on her sometimes to observe her playing and she is obviously in her own little world creating a fantasy. She is talking a lot more these days. It is still not totally clear but she is trying and can say some two syllable words like airplane, paint can, toothbrush, Dharma … and so much more. She isn’t quite putting sentences together but she is forming small sentences and learning that it isn’t just ‘dog’ and ‘cat’ but ‘a dog’& ‘a cat’. She knows the letters of the alphabet by site and will call out ‘A B C … etc.’ She knows the BMW symbol on Eric’s car and says ‘BMW’. She expresses her emotions and knows how to manipulate her daddy by batting her eyelashes and reaching for him and saying, ‘dada’ in a very pathetic and sultry voice. It works every time. She has become quite the socialite and has learned to clink her cup against glasses to make a toast. In addition she has the fake, mocking laugh when hears adults chuckle. It’s very amusing. We are teaching her manners and how to be polite but somehow Eric and I are falling a little short. Any advice and experience would be helpful. She hears us say ‘please’ & ‘thank you’ but she is rebelling against using these words of gratitude. She has learned that food isn’t just for eating but can be played with. She has brought her love of cars and motors into her meals and pretends that the food is a car (or some wheeled vehicle) and will ‘vroom vroom’ the food around on her plate. I have just begun to potty train her. She is no longer shy about sitting on the pot without her pants on, and can sit for 5-10 minutes as long as there’s a pile of books to read. She hasn’t peed in the potty yet, but she can happily sit on it for quite a long time. She recently had a really bad constipation problem which lasted for 3 days; I think that it may be related to her being potty trained. I hope that I’m not doing something wrong. I haven’t forced her to sit on the potty, and I feel like this is the right timing because she was showing interest in the toilet, so I think that I’m training her correctly so that she doesn’t become mental about the act. I’m trying to make it as fun and natural as possible. She has had some very horrible temper tantrums where I’m afraid that she’s going to hurt herself. It’s pretty scary and since she’s getting stronger it is much harder to control her from flailing around. She is a very sweet girl most of the time, but when she gets mad … WOW. She is out of control. I don’t think that she is being bratty, but expressing her anger in the only way that she knows. She just gets pissed off and she’s very dramatic. Astrid is obviously growing but I can’t really pinpoint where. She’s growing out of her clothes but she hasn’t really gained too much weight, or grown taller. The mark on the wall is in the same spot from 1.5 months ago and she only weighs 20.6 on my scale (as of today). Grandma A’s scale reads 22 pounds. She is still wearing 12-18 month clothes but because her body is shaped like a child instead of a 12 month baby, nothing fits her well. She has been wearing the same pair of jeans for 2 years (she got them when she was 6 months old and they had to be rolled up but now they fit her perfectly)! She is very lean and tiny; her legs are skinny and her waist is thin. Baby Jack is almost as big as her; his head is the same size and he’s only a few pounds lighter (he’s only 4 months old). I only compare to put things into perspective because to me she looks normal. I can’t really think about too much more that she is doing, but I know that there’s so much more. She will do some really silly and crazy things that make me smile and definitely laugh out loud: she woke up from her nap today with her socks on her hands (hysterical, but I guess that you had to be there); she puts Grandma A’s pasta strainers on her head and walks around like it’s a hat. She knows how to sing the ‘Little Mermaid’ song … “ah ah ah, ah ah ah etc.” She sits on Dharma and expects Dharma to ride her around like a horse (she jumps up and down on her back and says ‘giddy up’); it doesn’t hurt Dharma but Dharma is too mellow to even care. She loves the feel of her hair on her face and will move her head back and forth very quickly so that it looks like she’s having a fit of some sort (she especially likes to do this when she is in public so that it embarrasses me, because she looks like she is CRAZY). I found her sitting in the dryer the other day with a load of towels. She has this shopping cart that she turns upside down, wedges herself in the bottom so that I have to come rescue her every single time (she does this only for attention). She walks around and helps me scoop the poop; she’s my navigator and will scour the backyard and call out ‘a poop’ when she sees one. Aunt Amy has a small steering wheel charm on her key chain; she saw this and held it with two hands and simulated driving while going ‘vrooooommmm’ (how she knows this is amazing to me). She will sneak up on me and will roar like a monster with her hands in the air. She is still small enough to fit in cupboards and will hide from me. There is so much fun stuff that she is doing right now. This is by far my favorite stage that she is going through. I could live with this phase forever. She is just a really fun and outgoing kid, and so enjoyable to hang out with. So far, Astrid is my hero and my little star.