2008: A Look Back

Here is Piper's year in review for 2008. I can't believe how much she has grown, from 3 months to 15 months. She has turned into her own little unique person with her own personality and opinions. She is definitely not my little baby anymore, and I kinda miss that.

Aquadoodle

Uncle Ryan got Piper an Aquadoodle for Christmas. This was a really good gift for her since she still puts things in her mouth when she draws. I am really ready for her to grow out of this phase so she can draw more independently. She loves to color and scribble, but I have to be there the whole time or she ends up with everything in her mouth. Anyway, since the aquadoodle works with water, it won't hurt her to put it in her mouth.

Great Times

We went to Great Times again yesterday. Kinda silly considering that she now has her very own ball pit in her bedroom now. She had fun playing with her cousin though and is big enough to do a few more things in the play area. Grandma had fun watching them both. Erick and I played a couple of games and won some more tickets to add to her collection. One of these days we will be able to get her a nice prize. They have a lot better stuff than Chuck E Cheese does.

Bounce and Spin Pony

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Here is a video of Piper on her new pony. We just hooked it up to the t.v. last night, so she's still not sure what is going on, but she does like to rock on it. Hmmm...rock was not in the item description. She hasn't figured out the spin thing yet although she can bounce. I hope it holds up. She's so rough already on it, I'm almost afraid it's going to tip over.

Merry Christmas!

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I hope you all had a very Merry Christmas! We spent the afternoon at Erick's parents' home, and had dinner and opened presents. I'm glad I was able to talk to my cousin Lynn today, but missed talking to Grandma. Dad hasn't called me back yet, but I hope he had a good day. Merry Christmas Tabetha and Brian! I hope to see you soon! Jeni, I hope Jaxin finally fell asleep after his long and exciting day. We miss all of you!

Making of the Ball Pit-Part I

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Beansie

Uncle Ryan got a new puppy, a pug, and brought it over last night. Piper was so excited to see it. Two dogs at the same time...she was in heaven! She did really well, and was gentle with Beansie. Ginger was really good too and wasn't rough or anything. Piper wanted to pick the puppy up though. She was about the size of one of her stuffed animals, so it was understandable.

Helping With the Laundry

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15 Month Checkup

We had our 15 month appointment today. Piper did really well and weighs 24.4 lbs (75%) and is 33 inches long (95%). Dr. Nazer said she is doing great and said she won't need to come back until she is two. That surprised me since I figured she would return at 18 months. She should be in a toddler bed by then, and her vocabulary should increase, along with her stubborness.

She received two shots today, DTaP and PCV. She was scheduled to get the MMR, but Erick is concerned about autism risks and refused it. She needs it eventually, but since she's not in daycare, it's fine if we wait. She can get it at her 2 year appointment. This way she didn't have to have so many shots all at once today. The doctor says she is definitely not at risk and is advanced for her age. There's nothing to worry about. It's funny that she mentioned she is ahead of where she should be since I haven't told her even half the stuff that Piper can do.

Which Picture Do You Like Best?

Okay my dear family, which one do you like the best? You are getting one framed for Christmas, and the others you can just have copies if you want them. Tell me what you think?

Shape Puzzle-video

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Piper really likes her puzzles, but tends to only want to do them one time, then she's done for the day. I've tried many times to videotape her in action, but I can never get her to "perform" on command. We did this one early this morning, but then of course the camera ran out of space on the memory card before she finished. She was losing interest by the end anyway.

She can only do 6 of the 9 shapes consistently: circle, oval, square, rectangle, trapezoid, and triangle. We are still working on the diamond, pentagon, and octagon. The octagon is the hardest of all due to its many edges. I posted about this almost a month ago too, and she was doing 3 shapes consistently then, so I can tell she is making progress at least.

What Do You Mean There's No Santa!?

General Update-December

Age (in months, or years and months): 15 months
Physical abilities: has learned to walk up the stairs but still working on walking down alone, balance is really good and she is starting to stand on one foot for a few seconds without holding on to anything, still climbing EVERYTHING, wants desperately to ride the tricycle that we got from a friend, and pushes herself around with her feet, but hasn’t got the coordination yet to pedal successfully
Speech/language: vocabulary, sentence length, etc: not much growth unfortunately even though her comprehension and ability to follow multi- step directions is great. 1-2 word sentences still. Knows and points to about 20 body parts
Reading/pre-reading: Still very engrossed in pretend reading to herself, but demanding we read to her more and more. On average we read about 20 books every night, many more than once.
Number stuff: knows one and can show you on her fingers how many one is, points to the numbers in her book when I count them
Other cognitive stuff: puzzles, reasoning, etc: some interest in her peg puzzles, will do one time then she’s done with that puzzle for the day, remembers everything, knows how to get home when coming home with Grandma- we live in an apartment and she knew to climb upstairs to the second floor and which one of the three doors she should try to open, can find anything when we ask to go get something even when we don’t know where it is.
Creativity: loves her art time and always wants to sit at the table and color, I’ve been trying to branch out and give her more options of things to do. She’s enjoyed stickers and a couple other crafts we’ve done
Imagination:continuing pretend play with her dolls and stuffed animals, pushes them on her tricycle, rocks them in her chair, feeds them her sippy cup since we took the bottle away last month, talks on her phone all the time (opens phone “hello…babbling…bye” closes phone. Really wants the kitchen set we have “hidden” in the closet that will be from Santa this year
Social: still not around other kids much, so I’m not sure how she is in this area.
Character/personality: fearless and silly, loves to make you laugh, has figured out how to tickle us
Anything else/other: Amazingly enough she will go sit in her time out chair when we tell her to, although she still is testing us by standing up and waiting to see if we’ll make her sit down again. She’s becoming picky about what food she eats, and we struggle to get her to eat any kind of meat. She has totally figured the whole Christmas present thing out and ripped into a gift the other day that she received early. I didn't have to show her anything about how to open it.

New PJ's

Raul brought over Piper's Christmas present last night since he'll be out of town over the holidays. We didn't have to show her how to do anything, she just tore right into her present and opened it. Here she is in one of her new pajama sets.

Ball Pit

Grandma got us some balls when they were on sale at Toysrus. We put them in a swimming pool first, but Erick thought we might try the pack and play, so I got it back out and we filled it up with balls. I think she likes it. She was definitely having fun throwing the balls at us and all over the living room.

Piper Pinball

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Okay, some of you may think I'm horrible for video taping this, and some of you may find it humorous. Reminds me of the clips you see on America's Funniest Home Videos. Piper thought it was completely hilarious, and I have no idea how or why she came up with this idea. Like I've said before, she's a pretty tough kid.

Candy Canes

I played around on Photoshop tonight to create this pic. Too bad she doesn't know what she's really holding. I'd never get them away from her if she figured out they were food and that they taste good.

Flour Power

Someone on BabyCenter suggested that they let their child play with flour in a bowl, and that their child would stir and pretend to cook with it. In theory this sounded like a fun idea. I was anticipating a mess, and thoughtfully chose a bowl that was deep. The stirring idea was not received well. Piper decided that the spoon would however, be useful to fling flour all over the room. I figured she would attempt to eat it also, but assumed that flour probably wouldn't taste very good, and oh well...it's not going to hurt her. Sure enough she decided to taste it...over and over. It did however keep her entertained for quite a while. Even after it was all over the floor, she still tried to pick it back up and put it back in the bowl. Hmmm...I'm not sure who learned more from this experience?

Read it Again Mama

Last night Piper was really into reading her books. I think I read 18-19 to her out loud, some of them 2 or 3 times. Most of them were really short books, but still, she kept asking for more. I have some books here at school that I haven't taken home yet, so I guess tonight is the night. I told Erick's mom I would give some to her to keep at her house too. I'm thrilled she is so into her books. Maybe this will stimulate her language development, and she'll learn some new words.

Where a Kid Can Be a Kid

We went to Chuck E Cheese the other night. Piper had been there before with her daddy, but I had not been with her before. She really liked the carousel and the climbing tunnels with the slide. Erick even took her into the big tunnels. We have lots of tokens left over and a receipt for 500 tickets. Someday we'll cash them in for a decent prize when she's bigger. She doesn't know what she's missing now.

Winter Photos

It finally snowed and stuck to the ground. Piper is fascinated by this white stuff, and can't quite figure out what it is. She even got to try out her new snow boots. She hated them when I first put them on, but she thinks the zipper is fun to play with.

Christmas Crafts

I'm trying to come up with some craft ideas for Piper to do this Christmas. Yesterday we worked on tissue paper art. She put the paper on the contact paper, then I cut it out. They turned out okay, and she had fun making a big mess.

New Playthings

Piper got a new table and chairs from one of my friends, along with a bunch of other stuff. We are saving the kitchen playset and grocery cart for Christmas from Santa...shhh! Some of the other items I put back until she gets a little older- like the tricycle and puppet theater. The table is a little big for her, but she can manage to climb up on the chair. Imagine that! :) I've moved all of her art supplies into her room for now. They were on the dining room table, but I'm tired of it being covered with clutter. Hopefully she'll get an easel for Christmas too.

We need a bigger place for all of her new stuff!

Making Cookies

Last night we made chocolate chip cookies, and Piper got to help. Even standing on her step stool, she is too short to reach the counter. So she sat on the counter and helped add ingredients to the bowl. She even helped stir the chocolate chips in at the end.

She wasn't too sure about licking the beaters at first, but tried it out before finally throwing it on the floor. I think she liked eating the cookies the best of all.

Daredevil

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Boy does this child like to climb. So much that she scares me to death at times. Like tonight, she was using her book basket to climb into the chair. And, she was rocking the chair by herself. Then she figures out that she can climb from the chair over the table to the couch. Yes, I was right there, you can see the camera jerk when I thought she was going to fall out of the chair once. You seriously have to watch her every second!

Body Parts

Here is a sample of some of the body parts Piper knows. She has to really be in the mood to show off for me and let me videotape it at the same time.

Friday Flashback

Here's a photo from last spring. She was probably 5-6 months old. Erick made her this swing/bouncer. I promise it was safer than it looks!

Happy Thanksgiving

The Ball Problem

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Here is my funky munky figuring out how to get the ball out of the water bottle. I had to help her a little with the lid since she had trouble unscrewing such a large lid. She's good with smaller ones, but this was too much. I thought it was interesting to watch how she learned she couldn't just pull the ball out with her hand. It was too big to fit through the hole.

Bye Bye Bottle

We officially got rid of Piper's final bottle last week. She was still taking one at bedtime a lot of nights even though we are still nursing. So now she gets a sippy cup if she needs it at night. She has also been doing a lot better about sleeping all night. I can't even remember the last time she woke up at night. The one time she did cry recently, I just brought her to bed with me without nursing her, and she fell back asleep right away. I'm hoping this new trend continues, since I'm getting much more sleep lately.

Ball Drop Explanation

I posted this again because the first video I posted is not working for me. It's taking forever to load. That video is a combination of three clips mixed together. The video labeled Ball Drop is just one of the clips. Basically it shows how she figured out where to put the balls and how she knows to track them as they roll down the different ramps. She also knows to get the ball from the exit at the bottom. However this particular clip doesn't show everything obviously. I didn't want to import all three videos separately.

FYI: I hate that Photobucket will nto let me add comments when I import my video to Blogger.

Ball Drop

I Thought I Taw a Putty Tat

We went bowling last night. I wasn't too sure I wanted to go since I wasn't sure about how loud it would be. Turns out it was fairly quiet until the very end. We bowled a couple of games. My first games sucked, I think I bowled a 100 even. Second game was better at 164. Candice took Piper to the arcade during our second game and won her a Tweety Bird stuffed animal. Just what she needs...more stuffed animals! :) This thing is bigger than she is too!

Halfway through our game the family across from us asked me what my name was because I looked familiar. It turned out to be a former student from five years ago. She had a friend with her from the same class. I had thought the parents seemed vaguely familiar, but didn't even think about it. The girls, Beth and Olivia, were so grown up. I can't believe it has been that long since they were in first grade.

Piggy Bank

I showed Piper how to put pennies in her piggy bank last night. She had fun putting them all in there, and even figured out that there was a plug on the bottom to get them back out. Maybe she'll be a better saver than Mommy and Daddy are.

New Painting

This was the first time we tried painting with a paintbrush. She definitely prefers using her fingers still. I had a hard time convincing her not to taste the paint too, since we used tempera this time instead of finger paint. The picture was painted on canvas and turned out really well. Afterwards her hands were stained even though the paint was washable. She soaked and played in the tub and soon was squeaky clean.

Helping with Laundry

Usually she's a much better helper. Today she thought she'd inspect the dryer for Daddy. He says she climbed in there all by herself. Now I'm really going to have to watch her!

Shape Puzzle

I got her a shape puzzle because the other ones she had were too hard with too many corners to fit in the spot. She can do the circle, square, and triangle pretty well now. Sometimes she'll do the rectangle. Everything else is still kinda hard to figure out where they go. If she takes out one piece at a time though, she always knows how to fit it back in the board. I don't think it will be too long before she can do it all. This video is really short. I had to film it on a different camera and I didn't have much memory left.

Reading

Here is my sweetie reading her number book. I found these cute tights for Piper at Macy's. They are from LittleMissMatched.