Turkey & Alphabet

Aria is getting really good at the alphabet, and can recognize the letters and say their sounds. She can say lots of the letters as we sing the alphabet song, and she can say all (well, almost all... she only says her version of W sometimes, but usually skips to X) the letters' sounds when we go through the alphabet together (not singing). Here is a video of Aria playing with her letters. She is matching the letter to the flash card. We had all the letters out earlier today, and she was getting all the matches then, too. She has a cold right now, so at the end, when Gramma says she is going to wipe her nose, she runs away ;-)



She is also really good at her shapes. We did get her a puzzle, and she gets the right shape in the right spot every time. She knows circle, square, rectangle, triangle, hexagon, pentagon, and diamond.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving day! We had a great week. We had our first 2008 Thanksgiving on Sunday with our friends (with the 4 musketeers themselves... Aria, Mia, Hannah, and Lauren! Why oh why don't I have a picture??) and then again on Thursday with friends and family. On Sunday, we gave her some Turkey to try, and she loved it. She has only had a few small bites of meat before, but she sure did dig into the turkey. No vegetarian baby here (if you didn't know, I am vegetarian). She wouldn't eat any of the sides, though. She doesn't like any of them, including PIE! (I am really wondering if we are really related! ;-) hehe)

Yesterday was VERY busy with all the cooking and preparing. Aria had fun helping, though. She loves to help me in the kitchen. She gets up on her step stool and helps me stir, and pour in the ingredients. She also likes to get into the bowls in the cabinets below.

She makes me laugh more and more every day. One funny thing is her reaction when she is excited (like Gramma or Grampa coming to the door or Yo Gabba Gabba comes on TV). She shrieks and puts her hands to her face, like an Elvis fan when Elvis would enter the room. It is really funny. When she is playing and gets excited, she talks (shrieks) in a REALLY high voice and waves her hands all around. I will get it on video one of these days!

She LOVES her stuffed animals, but one in particular that she loves most is Meow Meow. I love that she has a favorite toy, and that she named the toy herself. I never called her Meow Meow, Aria named her all by herself! She carries her around and asks for her all the time.

Wrestling with daddy is still an ALL time favorite thing to do. She has now learned to do somersaults. She can ALMOST get all the way over herself. She is funny - she tries to do them on the tile floor. I more her to the carpet, don't worry ;-)

I know I mention it all the time, but swinging is still an all time favorite thing to do. It's been beautiful out lately, and so we get to swing almost every day. She swings and watches Zig run all over the yard. She still loves her Ziggy.

She has been increasingly interested in shoes over the last month or more. She takes a pair of my heels out of my closet and tries to walk in them. She does pretty good, actually. She also likes me to walk around in them. Her favorite shoes of her own are her black shiny shoes. She asks me to put those on her feet a lot. She also likes to wear socks.

She is growing so much, and communicating so well, and she gets more and more grown up every day. She is turning into a little girl right before my eyes.

A whole month!

It has been over a month since I have last posted, and Aria has been up to a lot!

The month didn't start out too great bc Aria got sick the 1st week. She had a sinus infection that turned into an ear infection that lasted until just last week. She was coughing, too, so I think she had something else on top of that. She is all better now, though, and back to her happy, sweet (well, most of the time ;-) self.

We had a fun week of guests in October! Christina and Sydney came to stay for 8 days while my brother and his wife, Adam and Sarah, were in Africa. My sis and bro in law, Jake and Kat, also came in town the same week, with lil' Diella. It was a FUN and BUSY week! Aria LOVED hanging out with her cousins! On the Friday of the week they were all here, Aria started to repeat anything we'd ask her to say. She did really good at her attempts at words, and is doing even better now. She clams up when she gets in front of a lot of people, but once she warms up, she will start repeating. She is using the new words, too, and not just repeating. Her vocabulary has just boomed in the last month. She really enunciates, too. Any word that ends with a P or a K sound she really enunciates. Here is a little video of Aria enunciating her K sounds. It cracks me up every time!

Her favorite thing to do is SWING. She loves to be outside, and to play on her swingset. She like to swing as high as you can push her. I knew that the swingset was an absolute blessing at the time we got it (thank you for letting us use it, Auntie Janice and Uncle Bubby! Smoooch!) but how much of a blessing I did not know. She would play on there all day long if she could. She stands by the door and says swing swing swing? Asking me to take her outside to swing. She also can climb up the bars on the swingset. She learned how to do that from Christina and Sydney. She still loves to climb up the slide, too. And slide down ;-) She is fearless!

My favorite new thing that she started doing this month is singing twinkle twinkle little star. She actually sings the notes right and everything. She sings a lot of the words, too. If you sing it with her, she will fill in the last words of the line. If she sings it by herself, she will sing Twinkle Twinkle little star and then the rest of gibberish except the last word of every line. It is very cute!! She also sings the alphabet song (same song, of course, different words) and fills in all the letters with letter sounds (just not the right ones most of the time ;-) She is starting to learn her alphabet, though, and can spell her name (most times she does the A-R-I part and leaves off the last A, though). She can recognize some of the letters on her own, and will repeat all the sounds of the letters as we go through them.

She is also learning shapes, and is doing pretty good! She definitely knows circle, and will trace circles when she sees them, and point them out. She put together a shape puzzle correctly at Church last week, and that surprised me. I should get her some puzzles!

Oh how can I forget to mention Halloween! She was a clown ;-) bc of her clown hair. I loved her clown costume with the hoop. She was funny to watch waddle around in it. Her make up smeared right away, but she loved having it put on. We put pink makeup in her hair around the back and sides. It is not washing out! I have a permanently pink haired baby! Aria loved trick or treating! We practiced at our door. She'd knock (outside with my mom) and I'd answer the door and she'd say "TREAT!" She'd say the "trick or" part with her mouth but no sound, and then a big smile and would say TREAT. I hadn't planned to take her trick or treating, but since she had so much fun doing it, we went all around the cul de sac. She loved seeing the other kids in the neighborhood all dressed up. She also loved the decorations in front of the houses. She's too little to get Halloween candy, but I regreted not getting any the next day. I had no candy to eat ;-)

Aria's fav food at the moment is grapes, hands down. She will eat grapes all day if she could! She also loves plums, okra, ranch dressing and hummus. She is eating a LOT lately. Growth spurt, maybe.

She initiates all sorts of games. Some of her favorites are to go knock on the door. That started at Halloween with the trick or treating. She thinks it's so much fun... she says "knock knock?" and starts knocking with her fists in the air when she wants to go play. I think she might do this bc she wants someone (like Gramma and Grampa or her friend, Mia) to come over (and to be on the other side of the door). She also does a game where she makes a face, and wants me to copy. She'll go through several different faces as I copy her. She loves that! The faces always end with the same face.... tongue sticking out in cheek. She seems to have a new game every day. She has been a lot of fun these days!

Her favorite toys are her Elmo doll, her cat stuffed animal, and her plastic dog toy on wheels that she can drag around by it's leash (old fashioned kind of dog that kind of clicks as it rolls). She loves that toy! She drags it around all day, and puts it on her horse or zebra for a ride, or takes it with her in the high chair and feeds him food (along with Elmo and the cat), and sits and watches cartoons with him. She also likes riding on her horse and zebra toy, and as she jumps on them (the zebra bounces, so she bounces on all horses) she puts one hand up in the air like a bull rider.

OHHHH I never posted about the RODEO!! We went to the Rodeo in October, and she absolutely LOVED IT! I couldn't believe how into it she got. She clapped and smiled at the bull riders and all the other events. It was loud in there, but she loved every second!

Aria still loves to color. She colors lots of times every day. She has these washable markers that she loves (and I do too bc they wash out so easily!). She was coloring a picture of grover, and I asked her to color his eyes, and she did. Then I asked to color his nose, and then mouth, and then knees and then hands and then feet and belly- she did them all as I asked her.

She's getting more hair now, but is still FAR away from needing a haircut. I love her curls!! She now has 12 teeth. She got all 4 molars in October. She is working on the canines now, and is constantly chewing on her fingers the past week.

We went to the ZOO for my birthday on Sunday. She had a blast (we all did!). I will post separately about that and include some pictures.

I better stop bc this is such a novel. There is just so much to say, maybe I shouldn't wait a month inbetween posts! ;-) I also posted a video on the post below. She is feeding her Elmo doll. I was cracking up!

I love Elmo!

Here is a video of Aria from today. She loves her Elmo doll. When she signs please in the video, she is telling Elmo to say Please for a drink of milk.

I have so much to say about all that she has been doing over the last month! There is more to come ;-)