Our Week :: 7/19 - 7/25

Grandpa Dale stayed with us for a few days last week and Meghan enjoyed getting to play with his dog Buddy. They enjoyed sitting and watching out the front door together. 

Meghan is loving flashcards. She enjoys the touch and feel textures of these cards. She likes to label things she sees, pick a word we say out of two, or find a word we say from amongst the cards sprawled out across the whole floor. This girl also knows the difference between a combine and a tractor....important skills in the city :)

We got our first ripe peaches off of the tree this week. Meghan has always refused to eat the canned peaches we would offer them - we're assuming because of the texture. These fresh peaches, however, she inhaled!

She has been interested in bananas recently - she eats very little of them, but they are a food she used to refuse due to the texture.

This week we went to the Farmer's Market and a park. The park is designed for lots of climbing by big kids.....but she loves playing around the equipment anyways. Her sweetness is just amazing!

She found an acorn!

Meghan enjoys working on a task at the counter while I am working in the kitchen. This day she was sorting buttons into cups based on whether they were red or blue - then she did lots of practicing of pouring between two cups.

Our cucumber plant has been producing like crazy - like we've canned 11 quarts, eaten several, and still have given away at least 30! Meghan is obsessed with biting on them (especially since she's teething). This day she went after the cucumber and actually at a few inches down before admitting defeat!

We finger painted for the first time. She enjoyed it quite a bit and was enthusiastic about making the paint move around the paper!

She has been enjoying using her farm animal puzzle pieces as toys to play farm in her playroom.....I think it's so cute! While I'm working elsewhere I can hear her out there making all sorts of animal sounds :)

Some pictures from when Meghan was helping me on Saturday night - she had super messy hair, but was just being so cute!

And for your viewing pleasure....some video excitement!! 

Meghan @ 17 Months

Fine Motor: 

• She has been absolutely loving fine motor activities this month! 
• She mastered putting buttons through a baby wipes container and straws in an empty parmesan cheese container.
• She loves working on her shape sorter. She still doesn't think to switch which hole she's putting shapes into when she switches shapes, but with a reminder to look at the shape, she will trace it's outline with her finger (as I would do while teaching her to look at the shape), and look for a matching shape. She is still only about 50% accurate at it. 
• She continues to enjoy pegging activities. 
• She has enjoyed stacking her graduated bowls, large foam blocks, and small wooden blocks. 
• She has built some impressive towers with her mega bloks. 

Gross Motor:

• She is walking very well now. She crosses thresholds, steps over small obstacles, and walks on non-level surfaces (like the lawn). 
• She walks while holding your hand. 
• On Sunday, she took off from the sanctuary and walked all the way to the car with us. 
• She still refuses to go down the stairs by herself - though she has learned how and will sometimes do it on the last two stairs. 

Language: 

• Words (77): moon, oops, e-i-e-i, green, red, yellow, ham, walk, out (outside), hop, night-night, bubble, dog, bean (green bean), rock, chicken, fork, purple, downstairs, dance, butter (peanut butter), amen, orange, hello, Meghan, belly button, Kate, windmill, gate, bear, diaper, box
• Previously: ah (all done), apple, baby, ball, balloon, barn, bird, bwoo (blueberry), boo, book, boots, bottle, bow (hairbow), bug, bye-bye, cheese, clap, cup, Dada, down, ear, eat, hat, help, hi, mom/mama, milk, more, mouth, nap, oatmeal, papa (popcorn), please, prune, room, shoe, spoon, sock, teeth, that, uh-oh, wow, yay, yum
• Sounds (23): fox, goose, tiger, donkey, bear, monster
• Previously: pig, elephant, rooster, donkey, chicken, frog, bird, owl, dog, cow, rabbit, duck, sheep, horse, cat, "vmmm" for cars,  "mmm" while eating
• Signs (27): 
• Previously: all done, more, milk, hat, no, yes, eat, diaper, wash, phone, please, thank you, hot, cold, help, water, shoes, socks, up, book, bird, sleep/nap, dog, train, apple, bracelet, cracker
• Points To (16): hands, fingers, head, eyes
• Previously: hair, teeth, belly button, nose, mouth, feet, ears, toes, shirt, pants, socks, diaper
• This is the last month that I will be keeping track of her spoken words - she has passed the minimum number of expected words for a 2 year old and is picking up words at such a rapid pace that I am not going to be able to keep up with her. Yay! 

Eating:

• She has been working on molars this month - eating is either wonderful or terrible. The past few days have been terrible :( This poor girl takes a long time to get teeth in and it makes eating very, very difficult. 
• She has discovered a love of peanut butter and hummus! 

Sleeping:

• She is being weaned off the morning nap. It's currently 30 minutes. But she asks for it every morning. It will *hopefully* be gone by the next monthly post! 
• She takes a 2-3.5 hour nap in the afternoon. She is READY for it when it comes. I ask if she wants a nap and she squeals, heads for the stairs, all the while repeating "nap" and signing sleep. 
• She goes to bed between 6:30-7:00. 

Other Updates:

• She loves labeling things. Everything in her world needs a label - if she knows it, she says it. If she doesn't know it, she will ask us to say it. 
• She has fallen head-over-heels in love with her stuffed monkey Margo. Margo is as big as she is but is her very best friend and goes with her almost everywhere. 
• She has started saying "amen" at the end of prayers. 
• We went to Costco without friend Kate and she pointed to the empty seat next to her and said "Kate?" She knows that seat belongs to her buddy! 
• She has started cleaning up her toys. After roomtime she will clean up a good amount of her toys without help! 
• She loves to be outside. That word alone sends her running to a door where she begins nearly climbing in an attempt to get out. 
• She also loves baths with the same intensity. Asking if she wants a bath will cause her to move as quickly as possible to the stairs and then to the bathroom where she will continue saying "bath" until you have removed her clothes and set her in. 

Our Week :: July 13-19

This week was a very busy week with lots of errand running and lots of garden work, so there weren't tons of pictures. Here's what I got:

My friend Mandy found a marble maze for Meghan - Meghan loves it!

She has been enjoying "talking on the phone" - she holds it to her ears, repeats "hello" over and over again, and then goes on talking. This was a very popular activity this week! 

She had some crazy bedhead one morning after a bath the night before - her bedhead has been getting more and more interesting as her hair is getting longer! 

I made some play-doh for her this week. She at first enjoyed putting tools into it, but refused to touch it. After I formed it into balls she took to playing with it and really had a good time playing for 20 more minutes. I'm glad I made it gluten free as she decided to try it - I'm sure you'll know which of the following pictures is her face after trying a bite! 

We got a package on Saturday that came packaged in lots of packing paper - she LOVED it! Boxes and packing materials are one of her favorite toys! 

Daddy was installing a new fan in the family room - she was so helpful. She carried each fan blade from Daddy to where Mommy was cleaning them. She also enjoyed sitting underneath him and just watching him work. 

Her dress on Sunday probably makes it in my top 5 outfits of hers thus far! I think this little jumper is absolutely adorable on her! And her blue eyes showed up so well in this picture....

I, again, didn't take a picture of the cross-stitch this week. Very little has changed in the past week. I've started having a good bit of pain in the joints of my hands in the last 3 weeks and so progress has been slowed down considerably. I have also been working incredibly hard wrangling garden produce during the day which has been wearing out my hands by evening, as well. I'm hopeful that I will be able to make good progress to share again soon!

Our Week :: July 6 - 12

On Monday, I told Meghan it was time for a nap and she started heading towards the stairs. She was carrying one of the cups from her kitchen so I said "Meghan, leave your cup downstairs." She turned around, put it away in the tub, and then proceeded to clean up all of her kitchen toys! Wow! 

These puppies are so very loved. She is rarely seen with only one of them - she needs to have both!

Poor girl was running a fever this day for the third day in a row - she's getting her molars and they have been causing a runny nose, drooling, and a fever. She was, however, still so sweet! She needed lots of extra snuggles, some extra sensory, and wanted to just be held and read to a lot. But she was oh so loving to Mama, her babies, and her puppies.

She was convinced that both babies and both puppies needed to be in the high chair :) 

On Wednesday, when I told Meghan it was time to get dressed, she excitedly headed to her closet and started knocking on the door. When I opened it, she immediately started grabbing this dress. I was hoping she would start participating in picking her own clothes soon - she seems to be taking it over quite completely! 

She has been loving fine motor put-in activities. She put all of the straws through the holes in a parmesan cheese container. She also enjoyed pushing large buttons through a wipes container a lot this week as well - I would dump the buttons out, she would quickly put them all through, and bring it back to me saying "help" so she could do it again. It's amazing how quickly she has mastered these skills! 

I pulled this bead maze up from the basement for her to play with again - she was an instant master of it! She loved moving the beads and watching them spin!

On Friday during nap, her diaper leaked onto her shorts. When I went to pull a skirt out of her drawers, she saw this one and insisted on wearing it. She was repeatedly saying please while signing it over and over again. She looked so cute despite not matching!

We played outside some - when the rain finally stopped! She finds Mama's boots fascinating!

We got out her new bubble machine and she enjoyed crawling around and smashing bubbles on the grass. 

It was sheer excitement for the girl! She loves bubbles and loves being outside!

She also enjoyed spinning her pinwheel for a long while! 

Our Week :: June 29 - July 5

Meghan helped me do some harvesting and weeding in the garden. Read the previous sentence as "Meghan tried to pull up all of the clover flowers in the yard near where I was working in the garden and then wanted to eat everything that I harvested.") 

When we got inside she ate several green beans and all of the cherry tomatoes I had just picked. She LOVES her fresh veggies. She also tried to eat the cucumber - the next day when I looked at it more closely, I notices little teeth marks that match a certain toddler who lives in this house :) 

Meghan absolutely loves books. She doesn't read board books very much anymore (there are a few exceptions: she loves her Dr. Seuss board books in the car, the board books Cole reads to her before bed, and the really big board books that she can crawl on and point to things in while looking at). She does, however, read multiple paper books in one sitting! I love the fact that this girl loves books and reading - she will look at multiple books saying words she knows in them, pointing out pictures to us or herself, and sometimes just babbling to herself with a cadence that sounds like an adult reading.

I finished the quilt that I started on mother's day. It's just a whole lot of bright colorful fabrics that I loved all mixed together in no particular order - we all like cuddling under it and Meghan insists that it's on the floor during the day for her to play on. I don't mind her love of it at all :)

I made some chocolate covered pretzels for Cole and I - we let Meghan try one and she became obsessed with them! While she wouldn't bite them (molars coming in and all), she would hold the piece in her mouth until saliva completely broke it down and then eat another piece.

She spent a little bit of time reading Daddy's "Wood and Steel" magazine - it's all about Taylor guitars, but she just loved looking at all of the pictures.

I got these large fabric blocks out for her. Eventually these will have cards put in them for her to practice all kinds of academic skills, but for now they are great for working on colors (she can say the color names and loves when you help her identify the correct ones!) and for stacking tall towers with!

Yup - the new quilt basically serves as a rug during the day - she brings the toys she wants to play with to the quilt throughout the day. It kind of reminds me of a year ago, when she would just play on a (much smaller) quilt in the family room all day. Except now she can move :)

The next night she decided to let Daddy read "Wood and Steel" and she read her book about going potty on the potty. So cute the two of them reading together!

I got her a "Water Wow" by Melissa and Doug several months ago on sale - we got it out for her this week and she loved it! It's like a reusable first paint with water. The water is in the pen - so no having to have enough skill to repeatedly dip a paint brush in a bowl of water. And, as the page dries the color disappears again so she can come back and do the same page all over. She enjoyed the activity (and giving sounds for all of the farm animals) immensely.

Cole build her a water table out of PVC and an old plastic storage tub we had. Since she didn't like getting in the pool we thought this would allow her to play in water (which she loves) while not completely "pool ready". She enjoyed splashing around with her cups, bowls, and spoons. She tried to drink the water out of several utensils, dumped water on herself proclaiming "oo!" every time she did, tried to catch the water running off of the sponge ball, and figured out how to make really big splashes with a spoon:

Later on the fourth of July, we got out the bubbles. She knew how to chase those guys down and had a blast running around after them!

Sweet contemplative little bit.

Potty training is coming up fast for this one! She has started staying dry for long periods of time and then soaking a diaper all at once during the day and is often telling me when she needs her diaper changed. Since she is so skinny, I was worried that the 2T underwear might not fit her and wanted to have some around when she is ready to start wearing them, so while I was at the store, I picked up a pair with the smallest weight range and waist circumference and they will fit her! She enjoyed stacking them up on her legs.

(Can I just say - I can't believe potty training is already even on my radar! I feel like just yesterday I was waiting for her to gain just a bit more weight to move into her cloth diapers! Eesh! She's growing so very very fast!)

On Sunday afternoon she played some more in her water table and then played in this sprinkler that she got with birthday money from her Great Grandma Stehr. She thought this was fun, too! This girl LOVES to play outside and in the water!!

And, of course, she needed to mow the cement!