Showing posts with label 18 months. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 18 months. Show all posts

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Easter Eggs




We decorated our Easter eggs tonight. I wanted something easy that only took one step. Have you seen the Easter coloring options lately? There's glitter, wax, stickers, plastic wraps, and more. Our kit was a basic dye pack with oil. It gave the eggs a tie-dyed look. All I had to to was dunk the eggs in a couple cups of water and we were done. Oh, and I also had to remove Piper from the top of the table every five seconds, and wipe up the spilled water, and save the eggs from being cracked or dropped, and so on.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Latest Masterpiece

Here is Piper's latest art creation. This was the first time we had attempted to work on the same piece for more than one day. This one took three different days and she used a variety of techniques. I totally copied this idea from the season finale of Jon & Kate Plus 8. In their show they did it all in one day, but I couldn't get the foil technique to work right so we adapted. You were supposed to place foil over sections already done to preserve each technique and layer. However I discovered I must be doing something wrong because everything I put the foil on just smeared and totally messed up the cool thing she had just done. So after the first day we abandoned the foil and just let it dry to keep the layers intact.
Some of the techniques we tried were: fingers, pastry brush, paint brush, sponge wand, hairbrush, crumpled foil, and a plastic scrubber that you wash dishes with usually. She painted with tempera on a cotton canvas. I added some of the paint to the canvas at first, but then she squeezed the rest on by herself and added the final layer with the hairbrush. I did pick the colors: red, green, purple, and black (only on the last layer), but they were the only choices we had actually. Next time maybe I'll let her choose.

She had a lot of fun painting the canvas, but she had more fun painting herself. She was a complete mess by the end of each day and turned the bath water all sorts of fun colors.
BBC you can see the full slideshow by visiting my blog.

Monday, April 6, 2009

General Update: April

Age (in months, or years and months): 18.5 months
Physical abilities: learned to open round doorknobs, climbs in and out of the bathtub for about a month now, walks up and down steps independently w/o holding on, but she will still turn around and crawl down them at times. She climbed up a ladder in the store the other day before daddy saw her, and climbed the ladder like bars on the playground that were very widely spaced. I introduced her to stacking pegs and she has enjoyed manipulating them. Is using a pretty good pencil grip now.
Speech/language: vocabulary, sentence length, etc: has doubled her speaking vocabulary to around 140 words in the last month but pronunciation is still unclear. My favorite new word is “please” for obvious reasons.
Reading/pre-reading: asks for books by name/content now, we are reading a lot of I Spy books and she is really good at identifying most things on the page. This is helping a lot with her vocabulary too although her receptive language is far greater than her oral. She is also really into books about bugs, spiders, and animals
Number stuff: no changes, still counts 123
Other cognitive stuff: puzzles, reasoning, etc: has determined that if she pushes enough buttons, eventually the DVD player will play her favorite one. Also knows how to turn on the cell phone that we used to let her play with. We had been turning it off so she wouldn’t call anyone, but now she can get around that. Excellent at matching games. We’ve started playing a modified version of Memory using only 4-6 cards at a time.
Creativity: Loves her art time as usual, although she is drawing on herself much more and enjoying being messy.
Imagination: Starting to make connections and apply real world knowledge instead of just copying. For example we took the dog for a walk the other day on her leash (we never use it usually) Piper carried the leash around for the next week along with her stuffed doggie. Made her dog toys kiss each other which was really sweet. I have no idea where she got that from
Social: not much interaction lately with other kids
Character/personality: Very loving and sweet lately, giving lots of kisses and hugs. Is requesting to be carried more when usually she doesn’t want to cuddle or be held much.
Anything else/other: I was off work this week for spring break so I would put her in my bed first thing in the morning so I could sleep in a little later. I was woken up several times this week by her poking me in various parts of my body and naming them for me, including trying to pry open my mouth to name my tongue and teeth. She’s known her body parts for months now, but I love that she’s finally able to articulate the words herself now. The language explosion has been great

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Fun in the Mud

It was beautiful weather Saturday, but it had rained the day before and it was still wet when we had our cookout. I took all kinds of toys with me for Piper to play with: her sand toy, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, books, a ball, and more. Guess what she wanted to play with...er in? The mud puddles! She had a ton of fun playing with her sand toys in the puddles. I had to go back and get her play shoes so she wouldn't ruin her new ones. Her clothes were just cheapo (but still cute) Garanimal brand, so it wasn't a big deal if she got them messy. They'll wash.
I also have a new camera so it was nice for me to play around with it and I think I got some good shots. I'm still learning about using it in manual mode though, and I really want to take a photography class this summer. The only shot I played with in Photoshop was the last one. The rest are completely unedited. So, I cut her feet off in one of the pics, but oh well.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Paint with Water Book

I remember painting these books when I was little, and I finally found a couple for Piper to color in at Target. I bought a Little People book and a Care Bears book. When we got ready to paint tonight, I realized I didn't have any small paintbrushes at home. So I improvised and we used cotton swabs instead. She had lots of fun and it was easy clean up for me.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Stacking Pegs

I was shopping for my nephew tonight at the teacher store, and I saw these stacking pegs that I knew Piper would enjoy. It's a puzzle and a peg activity in one. We have the added bonus that she now says and recognizes the word star, which was not one of the puzzle shapes she already knew.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Yum, Pickles!

I love this smile on her face. It's pure delight. She really enjoyed the pickle I gave her to eat.

Monday, March 30, 2009

New-Do

One of the best things about having a little girl is that you get to play with her hair. Of course that can also be the worst thing if you have no idea what to do with it, like our server told us today at lunch. Fortunately I have enough creativity, and Piper is patient and lets me do her hair any way I want. She is pretty good about not messing with it afterwards, but today she wouldn't leave the barrettes in, so this is the undecorated version.

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Hippity Hop to the Easter Bunny

She loved the Easter Bunny when we were at the mall. She was waving and laughing at him when we first went up there. There was a group in front of us whose little girl was scared to death of him. I was really surprised that Piper decided she liked him so well. Even after her turn was over she was reaching out to him to pick her back up and playing with his eyes and nose.

Friday, March 27, 2009

Playing on the Sandbar


Behind our apartments we have a decent sized woods and the river is a short hike away. We took Piper down there a few days ago and she had a blast playing on the sandbar. Apparently the sand didn't bother her as much as it did at the Children's Museum. I bought her some sand toys to use the next time we go down there, and I know she'll have fun digging and sifting in the mess.

Friday, March 13, 2009

18 Months...Look How Big I Am!

Is she really a year and a half old already? Sometimes it seems like she should be so much older, and other times she is still my baby girl. I can't believe how much she has learned already. This is a long list of things she can do at 18 months. Some things she just started and others she has done for a long time.

Stats: height: 34.5 inches, weight: 25.5 lbs, shoe size: 5 1/2, clothing size: 18 months for pants, 24 months for dresses/one piece outfits, and shirts, some 2T shirts, tights- at least 2T or bigger,

Teeth: all except 2 year molars, one front tooth is chipped

Hair: light brown/blond, almost reddish, getting longer every day and is past her ears now, can wear in pigtails.

Eyes: brown

Physical: walks (frontways, backwards, & sideways), runs, jumps off furniture, climbs everything, walks upstairs independently (but will use railing if it is there) and downstairs holding on to the railing, bounces on bed, strings beads and buttons on lacing string, pushes front/back on full size tricycle, can pedal tricycle if you give a slight push, tries to wash/dry hands, brushes hair, brushes own teeth several times a day, helps do laundry putting clothes in and out of the dryer, turns dryer on, blows kisses and gives real kisses with pucker, turns light switches on and off, closes doors and tries to turn door knobs, unscrews lids, kicks and throws balls overhand, "shoots" baskets, enjoys building with her megablocks, thinks it's funny to look at things upside downwhile looking through her legs, can balance on one foot for a second or two,

Clothing:
can put on socks and shoes sometimes, hats, takes off clothes, unzips zippers, helps put arms in coat, hates to wear her shoes and frequently removes her socks.

Food:
loves fruits and veggies, wants to feed self, uses fork and spoon, drinks from a straw, sippy cup, has distinct food and drink preferences, loves choclate milk, has still not had soda, breastfeeding twice a day, not using high chair at home-but still when eating out and at grandma's house,


Language:
(about 80 words/sounds) pronunciation not great
words: mama, dada, daddy, ball, bye, no, dog, hello, yum, papaw, all gone, up, bug, nose, baby, what's this, bad, balloon, ladybug, book, this, uh-oh, see, beads, boom, whee, whoa, bite, bee, stinky, jump, hot, yucky, dirty, shh, pretty, bike, peas, tickle, block, eat, duck, blue, see ya, bubble, step, zoom, twinkle, ouch, play dough (dough), beans

animal sounds: dog, cat, cow, owl, dinosaur, lion, sheep, pig, mouse, chick, chicken, bird, airplane, train, car, frog, monkey, snake, horse, duck, kiss, laugh, cough, goose, camel, alligator, tiger, bear
Receptive language is amazing and she easily follows multi-step directions, I can't guess at her language comprehension

Cognitive:
can point to all body parts on self and some on doll, easily does peg puzzles, working on 6-12 piece jigsaw, understands the word "rotate" and will rotate puzzle pieces if I remind her when a piece does not fit, does matching Eric Carle animal puzzle, sorts by color, shape, and occasionally size, stacking cups in order, stacks blocks (8) and builds trains, uses computer for Starfall, Kneebouncers, and Fisher Price websites, iPhone aps-drum kit, barnyard animals, sesame street podcasts, intentionally moves objects to where she can best use them to reach other things, seems to ask why or what happened questions, remembers what comes next in videos and books...anticipates, can pick out most shapes and some colors, matches numbers to pictures of numbers in her magnet book, some opposites like hot/cold, up/down, on/off, "counts" 123 on her fingers when watching Sesame Street,


Books: identifies objects in books by pointing or saying the word/sound, reads books to self for up to 30 minutes, loves to listen to stories and song books, can turn pages in books by self, pretends to count objects, can identify a few letters

Music:
sings parts of songs- ABC's, Twinkle Twinkle, Row Your Boat, Elmo song, likes to play piano and other percussion instruments, loves to dance and has several moves, loves her baby genius nursery rhymes and TMBG cds and dvds

Art:
LOVES art, uses crayons, pastels, tempera and finger paints, paint brushes, playdoh, colored pencils, markers, stickers, gluesticks. Has own art notebook to draw in at any time, draws circles and lines, likes aquadoodle, doesn't mind being messy

Pretend Play:
feeds dolls/animals, pushes on tricycle and car, makes them say whee when sliding or having fun, talks on phone incessantly, cooks food in microwave, pretends to eat,

Potty Training:
throws diaper away, signs potty, gets own diaper and wipes, has gone on the potty a few times, but once she got sick I stopped pushing it. She is too feisty to try it again right now.

Personality:
loves to tease, has a good sense of humor and does things wrong (like pants on head, wrong shape in shape sorter)just to get a reaction and laugh, rare to get a true temper tantrum, but she is very strong willed and yells at you if she is frustrated or doesn't want to be touched, loves to give kisses to everyone and everything but in her own time, Fearless and never gets hurt. If she cries you know she is really hurt. Very independent! Loves to play in water.

Social:
likes other kids but not around them much, prefers boys over girls, possessive of own toys, went through a hitting stage, but I think this has stopped. Loves animals especially dogs

Sleep:
sleeps through most nights, but hard to get to sleep at bedtime. Takes nap(s) easily during the day.

Favorite things to do: art!, books, puzzles, pretend play, climb, dance