zoo

Lately Andrea insists on having ALL of her stuffed animals in bed with her at night. She also takes to bed a small, puffy rainbow-colored ball that used to be a cat toy. She has to hold the ball as she goes to sleep. And "oh no!" if we lose the ball amongst the critters.

Happy Holidays

Christmas







Boxing Day

its begining to look a lot like Christmas

After Andrea's bath last night I briefly left her alone in her bedroom while I prepared her a bottle of milk. I heard a little voice behind me saying "hat! hat!". When I turned around I saw this:




Yes, folks - she did this all by herself.

Happy Hanukkah

Happy Hanukkah to our family in Boston and New York. We love you!

in so many words

Andrea is speaking.

Andrea's vocabulary has exploded in the past month. She's not only able to communicate in single words; now she can string together adjectives + nouns or adverbs + verbs.

Here's a sampling of what's in her growing vocabulary:

- all the major external body parts

- all her items of clothing

- animals (farm , exotic, and aquatic)

- the names for her toys

- the food she eats and the beverages she drinks

- plate, bowl, and utensils (alas, "fork" sounds like when she says "frog")

- "pieces" to describe small bits of things

- counting (She has 2-6 in order; after that she starts throwing in random numbers through 20. She refuses to start with 1, though, and will only start with 2.)

- she can identify "numbers" vs. "letters"

Andrea can't string together words into meaningful sentences yet, but wants to appear as if she can. She likes to babble with a few real words thrown in and appropriate sentence-like inflections. And she'll look you in the eye while she's doing it as if to say "are you getting this?".

words!

Andrea's 19 months old, and her vocabulary is growing rapidly! Here are a few of her current favorite words and phrases:

- "dude up!": Means "pick me up". We have no idea where it came from.

- "oh no! happened!": Said when she's just done something with unfortunate consequences. Today's latest example was when she pooped on the floor instead of the potty. Which brings us to...

- "poopy!": obvious

- "frog!": Andrea really likes frogs! Except when she says it, the "rah" sounds more like an "uh", and the "g" sounds more like a "k". At least she's able to clearly articulate "truck".

- "hot" and "cold": uses appropriately (i.e. "hot water" and "cold juice")

- "meat!"

- "catface!" : unfortunately, a favorite web cartoon.

- "slow!": because sometimes catface takes way too long to load

- "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew! gross!" :(sorry; that one's mama's fault)