Remember the days when I blogged weekly updates and easily published 15-20 posts in a month’s time? Yeah, me too.
Well, today’s a new day and all the conditions are right to write: we got about 7 inches of snow last night so we’re hunkered in. I tend to get antsy when I’m home for too long so I’m trying to mix it up and do things I don’t normally do. Like, for example, posting on here. So, for anyone who still reads this thing — here are some recent happenings.
Ariana keeps us entertained on a daily basis. She’s formed many opinions in a year (plus a few month). She refused the sippy cup for several months and then when she finally decided to give it a chance, she would not to drink out of any cups except the the red cup with the blue top. Absolutely would not. She also has mastered the art of signing more – which is typically reserved for food; but not with this girl. When she wants Mama to hold her, it’s more. When she wants to play with a toy someone else has, more. On snow days, she signs more every time the wagon stops. More when she wants to hold the phone while we’re FaceTiming. More to dogs when they walk away from her. (A foreign concept that someone or something might not understand her sign language.)
Speaking of phones, everything in her world is a phone. She loves to pick up anything she can find and aggressively say, “HEEEEDDO.” (That’s Ari-speak for hello.) She always puts her “phone” behind her ear and if she can’t find anything to be a phone, she’s perfectly content to pretend her hand is a phone.
Copper continues to be her best friend. She crawls on top of him, pokes his eyes, touches his nose, yanks on his tail, and squeals when she sees him. She hates the carseat and sometimes while she’s screaming, I’ll ask her about Copper. She stops crying for about 3.5 seconds until she realizes that I’m messing with her because her beloved puppy isn’t actually in the car with us. I think Copper was her second word, behind Dada. The dishwasher is her favorite place to play and many days, it saves my sanity. She rearranges the silverware, sets the dishes on the floor, and is at her happiest when she can play there. She comes running (technically, fast-crawling) when she hears it being loaded. When she’s clingy and wants to be held, I’ve been known to open up the dishwasher just so I can have a break and set her down for a few minutes.
She often plays a game with David that goes something like this:
“Dada!”
“Ari!”
“Dada!”
“Ari!”
“Dada!”
“Ari!”
They do this from separate rooms of the house and it seems to never end. (It’s also way funnier to hear it than it is to just read about it.) Dada is her word for everything but there’s a different excitement in her voice when she’s actually calling out to her Dada.
Her cousins were in town for Christmas so she had built-in playmates for about 4 days. The day they left to go home she was in the worst mood. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her act like such a pill. Life is rough when you have to go back to just Mom and Dad.
She’s gotten to see her aunts for a couple weekends in a row and they’ve been helping her walk around. Walk with assistance, that is. She crawled before she hit 7 months so I wondered if she’d keep the trend going and be an early walker. Verdict: negative. She walks all over the place pushing Leo the Lion or a basket with her toys in it. She walks holding on to the sofa, the wall, or someone’s hands. At almost 14 months, she’ll take one step every once in a while, but only with lots of coaxing. Why walk when you can crawl?
She likes to categorize things. Namely, spoons in the dishwasher and food on her tray. When she has food she doesn’t like, she puts it in the cup holder on her highchair tray. Once it goes in there, it doesn’t come out. It’s forever rejected. Tonight at dinner, after she had eaten everything she wanted, she was using the fork to drum and then dropped it on the floor. She knows she’s not allowed to do this, so I sternly told her “No” and shook my head. She looked right back at me and shook her head no. I busted out laughing so she’s been shaking her head at me for the last two hours just trying to get the same reaction.
Maybe I’ll write another one of these before it snows in 2018. Don’t hold your breath, though 😉
