Well, this month I am (yet again) late with the entry. The girl is now 2 years and 8 months old – she’s 2 and 2/3 years old! Not long to the big 3! She’s quite the character:
[[image:20110322-yaya29.jpg:Hi everyone!!!:center:0]]
I have no real excuse – sure, lots of work and all that. But it’s both work and procrastination I suppose.
This has been another quick month – we had another trip to New Jersey (and in fact Yaya’s 32-month birthday happened while we were there!), and the month does go by extra quickly when we’re on the road. Yaya continues to amaze us with all the talking and singing. When we’re home we still listen to music while we eat dinner, and there’s lots of drawing. Yaya still refuses to eat most things – no change there. And sadly, we’ve had quite a snowy March. Seriously depressing. We are all getting cabin fever. There was a week in NJ that we had beautiful spring weather so Yaya got to go to the park basically every day, but then the cold and snow came back again. Bah, humbug. All this is doing is making me crave a beach vacation – warm weather, sun, sand, warm water.
Yaya is trying to do everything “all by myself” now, like putting on her clothes and shoes. She has also really been into her lego-like building blocks, making some really fun creations. Who needs schematics when you build by instinct? She’ll put together something and then look at it and decide what it is. Once, after she built something, she brought it over to me and said, “Yaya built a horse”. It looked like a 2-dimensional horse. I mean it, seriously. I don’t know that she sets out to make a horse, but she’s happily creating stuff and then interpreting what she sees. We also got her a bunch of little musical instruments (castanets, triangle, mini-maracas, harmonica, finger cymbals, etc.) which she loves (cheap ones for kids from Amazon)! She runs around and plays them. She’s starting to identify the sounds of instruments she hears (on TV, CDs, etc.) and she’s actually quite accurate. Just by listening to it she can identify pianos, “violins” (well, all bowed/stringed instruments she calls “violins”), guitars, drums, and “trumpets” (all brass instruments except tubas are trumpets or horns – tubas/sousaphones she knows). She’s also getting really good at kicking, throwing, and shooting balls. Hitting them, still not so much. Like any little kid, she throws herself into her activities with complete abandon – always fun to watch (and participate). She’s definitely a bundle of fun and joy. She also loves to play “let’s pretend” – sometimes we are different animals, sometimes we pretend to play instruments, sometimes we pretend to be a doctor. She’s also starting to talk about weird episodes of the Wonder Pets, by weird I mean episodes that do not exist (e.g., Save the Duckling on the roof of the blue house). The “blue house” is what she calls our house. We think she’s dreaming about things and may not be able to distinguish between what is a dream and what’s reality. She’s becoming a regular little human being, I guess!
Anyway, let’s get to how she spent her 32-month birthday in New Jersey! She had to be woken up to go with Papa to drive Mama to work.
[[image:20110322-yaya01.jpg:Good morning, I’m ready!:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya02.jpg:Happily buckled into her carseat:center:0]]
As to what I’m up to at work – this is what she says. When asked where does Mama go? She says “Mama goes to building”. What does Mama do in the building? “Mama eats lunch”. Um, OK. I would really like that job where I sit in a building and eat lunch all day! 😀 They drop me off at “the building”:
[[image:20110322-yaya03.jpg:Bye-bye Mama:center:0]]
Then Papa and Yaya head back to the hotel for breakfast. Yaya’s favorite: bagels! (Formerly known as “beedo”).
[[image:20110322-yaya04.jpg:Flower, please:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya05.jpg:Practicing flower arrangement skills:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya07.jpg:Picking out the raisins:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya06.jpg:Raisin bagel:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya08.jpg:Fascinated by the bagel or something:center:0]]
We have for months been gently introducing Yaya to the subject of potty training – and for months pretty much all she does is pretend. She will sit on her potty at home, or as in the picture below, on the actual potty, but nothing happens. We’re trying to raise the level of intensity of potty training in April – wish us luck! Oh, for the below picture, she’s not even undressed – fully diapered and dressed, but pracitising her sitting on the potty skills (quite happily, it seems).
[[image:20110322-yaya09.jpg:Yaya sits on potty!:center:0]]
And then it is time to go to the park – it’s not a terribly warm day but Yaya still has a good (short) time at the playground:
[[image:20110322-yaya10.jpg:Let’s go to the swings, Papa:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya11.jpg:Yaya swinging!:center:0]]
After the playground, Yaya naps and then it is time to hang out with Papa.
[[image:20110322-yaya12.jpg:Multitasking-Wonder Pets on baby computer, Cartoon Network on TV:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya13.jpg:Diego the penguin wants to sit on the sippy cup:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya14.jpg:Stealing Papa’s clean hankies and hiding under one:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya15.jpg:Playing with her potty seat:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya16.jpg:Pirate Papa and Pirate Yaya (something else to do with Papa’s hankies):center:0]]
And then Mama and Jen arrive back from the building (we ate lunch all day!) and Papa and Yaya come down to the lobby for the nightly reception that the hotel provides.
[[image:20110322-yaya17.jpg:Cross-eyed view of the yellow milk:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya19.jpg:Yaya counts rocks:center:0]]
Yaya just loves those jars of flowers and little glass rocks. She counts them, and makes shapes and letters with them. Who needs expensive toys when you have a jar of rocks? Or an empty box. She likes that too.
[[image:20110322-yaya20.jpg:Yaya drawing:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya18.jpg:I quite like this artsy-ish shot:center:0]]
After our traditional hang out in the lobby with Jen, we say goodbye (temporarily) to her and go up to get ready for dinner.
[[image:20110322-yaya22.jpg:Hmm..brush doesn’t work so well with pirate bandanna:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya23.jpg:Ahhh that’s better:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya24.jpg:Now I’m ready to go!:center:0]]
We go to dinner with Jen at Chevy’s in Linden (Chevy’s!!!). Yaya sits in her high chair.
[[image:20110322-yaya25.jpg:Let’s draw!:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya26.jpg:Take jacket off!:center:0]]
And then it was time to say goodnight to Jen. If you’re wondering – Jen shied away from the pictures. She’s real – she’s not a fiction of my imagination (or at least if she is, she still turned up the next morning to carpool to work so she’s a very conscientious figment of my imagination) :-). So Jen, next time I’m going to get a good shot of you for the monthly blog ;-). Meanwhile, back at the hotel, Yaya takes off all her going outside clothes.
[[image:20110322-yaya27.jpg:No socks! No socks!:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya28.jpg:She gets a few last minutes of Wonder Pets on the baby computer:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya30.jpg:Last phone call of the evening:center:0]]
[[image:20110322-yaya31.jpg:Laying out her boots in readiness for the next day (hah!):center:0]]
Then it was bedtime for little girls. And their mothers. Seriously I went to bed with Yaya every night we were out there this time. Couldn’t keep my eyes open. Ah well.
Happy birthday, baby! We love you! Gnight y’alls! See you next month! And to close, here are Pirate Papa and Pirate Yaya:
[[image:20110322-yaya21.jpg:Arrrr matey!:center:0]]
