Sunday, September 20, 2009

Birthday Bash



We celebrated Piper's 2nd birthday at the park. She had a lot of fun playing with her cousins. We made hamburgers and hotdogs for lunch, and had chips, potato salad, and cole slaw to eat as well. Her birthday cake had Barney on it since she picked out a plush Barney at the store on her birthday. We opened presents again, since she had already done this at home with mom and dad. I was surprised that she blew out her birthday candles all by herself. It's hard to believe that she is already 2!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

General Update

Age(in months, or years and months): She will be two this Friday (sniff)

Physical abilities: Not much she isn’t doing these days. Can do everything at the playground and freaks out grandma who doesn’t think it’s safe. Loves sliding down the fireman pole and swinging on the bars. Is learning to pump her legs on a regular swing. I’m sad to see the end of summer. She was making so much progress in swimming with a kickboard or floaties.

Speech/language: vocabulary, sentence length, etc: Tons of vocab learned this month including shapes, colors, and emotions. Previously she could identify pictures but could not say the word. She is using more and more adjectives and abstract words in her speech. Most sentences still about 3 words, but some more or less. She’s very interested in possessives and talks about items that belong to certain people. She refers to herself still as “baby” but occasionally will use her own name. When looking at pictures of herself, it’s about 50/50 between saying “baby” and “Piper”.

Reading/pre-reading: Her favorite phrase seems to be “no mommy you read” She’d rather I read her stacks and stacks of books, than for her to look at them independently, although she still does read to herself in the car and occasionally at home. Knows about half her letters. We haven’t been on Starfall much this month since the computer is out at home.

Number stuff: I noticed that she is counting on whenever we are counting together. For example if we are counting steps and stop at the number 8, she will tell me the next number. She still doesn’t have a complete grasp of rote counting although she is very close to having all the numbers in order to 10. Appears to be able to tell me how many of something if there are 3 or less. Apparently her daddy asked her yesterday how many cookies she wanted and she told him she wanted 5, he said how about 2, and she countered with 4. Perhaps a fluke though.

Other cognitive stuff: puzzles, reasoning, etc: can independently use my iPhone better than a lot of adults.

Creativity: Coloring is a little more developed and purposeful. Wants to (and thinks she can) write her name, but it is still not quite there. Drawing consists of mostly circles, lines, and dots with scribbling mixed in.

Imagination: Very into playing with her dolls right now. Insists I put diapers on them as well as Moo her stuffed cow.

Social: Shy around adults but warms up after a while, we are still working on the hitting and pushing with other kids. She’s a bully even to kids who are bigger than she is.

Character/personality: strong-willed and independent, concerned about hurting others (after the fact)

School Updates: n/a

iPhone

Piper is able to navigate my iPhone better than some adults at this point. She knows all about scrolling from page to page, and loves to look at the pictures on it. One whole page is full of aps just for her. This is a video of her playing one of her favorite games. She has to touch a shape on the screen when it is said. It starts off with 3 shapes per page and then adds more after you pass each level. She also really likes I Hear You, Balloon Animals, and The Wheels on the Bus. I will have to get her on video doing Balloon Animals soon. It is so funny to watch.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Puzzle




This video was taken a while back, but I haven't got around to adding until now. I have a difficult time taping Piper doing anything. I had to bribe her with a cookie to get her to do this puzzle. Hence you can hear her in the middle and at the end talking about her cookie.