Another month, and how quickly it passed! Granted, I only fairly recently wrote her 28 month blog (cheating and dating it earlier than it was actually written, but whatever). 😉 At least this month I’m able to work on this entry only a few days after the fact (hooray to client holiday shutdown period!!). Here she is, saying hey y’alls:
[[image:2010-29month09.jpg:Hey y’alls:center:0]]
Allie is definitely a chatty kathy. There are nights when she keeps herself from falling asleep just talking away – to us, or to her stuffed animals. And the minute she stops talking she falls asleep almost instantly. It’s quite amusing (although not so much when you’re waiting for her to fall asleep so you can go eat some dinner). She refers to herself as “Yaya” (which is what we’ve called her from before birth even, Alya – Yaya, get it?) now, and almost never answers to Allie. But it’s always funny when she talks about herself in the third person “Yaya tippy-toeing” or “Yaya play game”. She is definitely speaking in sentences and her pronunciation is improving all the time. If we don’t understand her words, she will pull out the animal noise or gesture and will find a different way to tell us what she means – she’s quite good at getting her meaning across. She’s constantly pulling things out of the air – she called Lily “too cute” and “precious”, and called me “sweetheart” the other day. It was heartwarming and hilarious. Where she gets some of the words she says – your guess is as good as mine.
We did our usual trip to New Jersey and she was able to say everybody’s names at the hotel, and of course since we hung out with Jen in the evenings, Jen has been figuring into the stories that she tells. “Draw [insertnamehere] [insertobjecthere]” (e.g., “draw mama triangle”) now includes, Mama, Papa, Baby (or sometimes Yaya), Jen, Lily, Opah, Atok, Yope Irfan (her cousin, of course), Pak Yope (that’s Hisham), and Wan Yong (Hisham’s wife). She now knows all the alphabets, but she does still get M and N mixed up at times. She’s so into drawing things or building things – she’s quite obsessed with her crayons, and she builds things out of anything. If there are no blocks or other things to build with, she’ll use crayons, books, whatever else at hand to build slides, seesaws, and other objects. Her drawings are pretty funny – she draws the face, the eyes, nose, mouth, telinga (ears), whiskers, toes, bum, and tail (narrating each thing). She starts out quite well – a round face, eyes, nose, mouth, the telingas are vertical lines above the head, the toes vertical lines below the head, and the whiskers are out of control all over the page lines. 🙂 I’ll scan in an example some time.
Sadly on the food front – Allie got sick after Thanksgiving, and this involved some throwing up. Since then she has refused to eat almost all her usual favorites (no chicken, no mangos, no plums, no peaches). The last few weeks, all she’s eaten is toast, garlic bread with cheese, pizza, bagels, bananas, and very occasionally mangos. She vehemently objects to all other food. We talked about it – and as she said “Yaya no eat chicken – Yaya coughing. Yaya no eat mango – Yaya coughing.” In this case, we think coughing = throwing up. Never mind that the last time she threw up (and wow, it was quite the scene – poor Jen was a witness to it), it was garlic bread. But garlic bread is not on her bad list. She is blaming all other foods though. We have been trying to entice her with different foods, setting it out for her to try, looking at her, not looking at her, bribing her, to no avail. We’ll keep trying – but if you guys have any ideas on what might work, we’re game. She has been drinking a ton of milk and soy milk to make up for the lack though.
We’re going to try potty training in earnest in a few days – going commando and dragging around froggy potty with us is going to be the best way. Wish us luck!
Here are the pictures of how the girl spent her 29 month birthday:
[[image:2010-29month01.jpg:”Good morning Papa”:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month03.jpg:”Yaya drink milk”:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month02.jpg:Allie and Lily:center:0]]
Allie has discovered that if she puts her balloons by the air vents while it’s blowing air, they will float!
[[image:2010-29month04.jpg:”Pink balloon floating”:center:0]]
Also, we have recently been able to talk her into getting her hair into a ponytail (to be like Millie, on Team Umizoomi):
[[image:2010-29month05.jpg:Mama doing Allie’s hair:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month06.jpg:”Yaya ponytail!”:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month07.jpg:She still likes to hold my ear:center:0]]
We also got some basic floor jigsaw puzzles which she really loves and has been solving almost all on her own!
[[image:2010-29month08.jpg:Busy bee puzzling it out:center:0]]
Then the doorbell rang, and it was the UPS guy bringing Christmas presents (or “surprise”, which is what Allie calls gifts) from Uncle Steve and Auntie Mari!
[[image:2010-29month10.jpg:”Surprise!”:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month11.jpg:Opening the presents:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month12.jpg:Reading the book:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month13.jpg:Another Splat book!:center:0]]
She received three new books – Mahalo!!! Then she has a nap:
[[image:2010-29month14.jpg:On the floor with Elmo:center:0]]
And then she’s back in business!
[[image:2010-29month15.jpg:Watching TV:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month16.jpg:”Hai-yah!”:center:0]]
That is her ‘en garde’ call to ask you to duel with her.
[[image:2010-29month17.jpg:Shooting the breeze with Lily:center:0]]
Then she had to be wrestled into the high chair to get her nails trimmed. She is usually a good girl and doesn’t need to be confined to the high chair for this procedure, but today she was extra-ornery:
[[image:2010-29month18.jpg:Snip!:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month19.jpg:Don’t hurt me, Mama!:center:0]]
And then some more running around the house:
[[image:2010-29month20.jpg:Geram Yaya!:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month21.jpg:”Draw Baby Kitkat!”:center:0]]
[[image:2010-29month22.jpg:Dinner time entertainment:center:0]]
And then it was bath and bedtime for little girls. Another fun and full day, and another wonderful month with the little darlin’. Happy 29 month birthday, baby! We love you!
See y’alls next month!
[[image:2010-29month23.jpg:Yaya and Curious George:center:0]]
