General Update-November

Child's name: Piper

Age (in months, or years and months): 13 months & 3 weeks

Physical abilities: climbing on and off everything, goes up and down stairs easily (crawling, not walking), brushes own hair and teeth, uses spoon well and working on fork, running, loves dancing with multiple “moves”, tries to stand on her head/somersault, walking backwards, spinning in circles, throws and kicks balls, throws balls into basket, helps clean up toys, put laundry in dryer and take out of dryer. She has been able to give hi-5’s forever, but now will come up to me and pull my hand up in the air so that she can hi-5 me

Speech/language: vocabulary, sentence length, etc: very few words still-about 10 including animal sounds, 5 signs, will ask to watch the Cookie Monster video clip on the computer
Reading/pre-reading: loves to read her books and can turn pages by herself, intense concentration and focus, recognizes pictures. Ex: I was talking to my sister on the phone and was telling her how Piper tries to moo like a cow. She went over and found her cow book in her book basket and brought it to me.

Number stuff: understands bigger and smaller, very precise about putting objects into her nesting cups one by one and then taking them out.

Other cognitive stuff: puzzles, reasoning, etc: stacking blocks up to 8 before they fall down or she knocks them over, has made patterns using blocks and nesting cups. I’ve only seen this 3 times though. I’m going to get her the mega blocks for X-mas to see what else she can do. Anything she gets her hands on she tries to stack- food, books, boxes, etc. Everything has a specific place, and she is very particular about where she places items. She has an amazing memory-remembers where toys are when you ask her to go get them. We were watching a video about colors the other day online and there was a yellow elephant. She noticed right away that it was an elephant and seemed puzzled that it wasn’t gray like the ones she normally sees. She threw a ball under the bed the other day and bent down to retrieve it. It was closer to the other side of the bed and she realized she should go around and get it rather than crawling under the whole bed. She can point to three body parts hair, ears, and nose. Loves to take things apart and put them back together. Some interest in peg puzzles, can match pieces but can’t fit pieces back in yet. I think I need to get a basic shape puzzle instead of the ones we have now of animals.

Creativity: loves to color, paint, scribble.

Imagination: plays with her doll, feeds her, brushes her hair, hugs and kisses, pushes her on her car, pretends to sleep, talking on phones and giving them to me to talk on and hand back to her, is fascinated with brushing her teeth and pretends to put toothpaste on markers, crayons, my eyebrow brush and “brush” her teeth.

Social: loves older kids, especially preschoolers, tends to scare kids her age because she is not shy and just runs up to them and hugs them, adores our new dog and showers her with affection. She is going through a shy stage with adults that she does not know, but warms up eventually.

Character/personality: happy, extremely independent, can be very intense and sober when studying something new, frustrated and mad when she can’t have her own way, curious and exploring everything pulling open drawers and cabinets, turning lights on and off. When she walks, she is on a mission and looks very determined to get where she is going like she has a plan. Never cries unless she is really hurt, but will whine when she doesn’t get her way or when she’s sleepy. She is one tough kid and also a daredevil!

Anything else/other: Her attention span is remarkable. She will look at her books for 30 minutes at a time. We found some ladybugs outside the other day and I had to make her come in after she sat studying them for 45 minutes. She is happy entertaining herself and does not need someone to find things for her to do.