50 months! 50 months of Yaya! 🙂 This month’s activities included our first work-related trip (to Chicago), seeing Becky and Phil in Elkhart for Labor Day weekend, Yaya’s first ever haircut (given by me!) as well as the usual stuff that we do at home.
[[image:2012-yaya50month-15.jpg:Teapot so we can play masak-masak:center:0]]
* Mouse over the pictures for captions
Alas, the girl remains a toastivore and cannot be tempted to even try anything new. She did consent to eat a few french fries so I guess that’s OK but even pizza has fallen out of favor this past month. She remains faithful to her toast, bananas, and milk. On the plus side, we can safely say that the girl does not eat any candy or junk food! We did also learn that Yaya has become a bread snob. She will eat her cinnamon raisin Thomas’s english muffins (lightly toasted with butter), and (pricey) artisanal white bread (lightly toasted with butter). Any mass produced or inexpertly baked loaves – rejected without so much as a sniff. I wish I had more time to make breads like I used to, and perhaps my own home made breads might lure her into new territory. The raisin-orange bread was always a crowd favorite. Still, we are not giving up! We always offer her some of our food. I also keep telling her she is not allowed to tell us she doesn’t like something if she hasn’t even tried it. Right? We’ll keep on keeping on. She’s got to give in one day.
Potty training status: Success!! We have finally weaned her of the need to wear a diaper at home! She has been fine sleeping without a diaper when we are in a hotel, etc., and all her diapers at home had been dry for a while. She just needed to have it on I think, for personal stylistic reasons. She went to bed so sleepy a few times that she forgot to insist on a diaper under her “jamas” (pyjamas). In the morning when she went potty for the first time and realized that she had underwear on under her jamas instead of a diaper she said, “Papa, my diaper turned to underwear last night!” It did make us laugh. Anyway, this happened a few nights in a row, and there was one or two regressions back to diapers at night, but then she told Vin that she could do it without a diaper. And voila, now our girl has achieved night time dryness and been weaned off of her emotional attachment to them! Huzzah!!
We still do a lot of pretend play and character-acting with Yaya. She is becoming really good at building things with her building blocks, all without a blueprint, and her artwork on paper is quite impressive. She draws a lot and has free access to crayons and paper, which results in more and more things being hung up on the art wall! We will run out of wall space before we know it. She talks a mile a minute and tries to convince everyone to do her bidding (usually fairly successfully). Lately, when she needs to be punished, she is sent to sit on the sofa until we say she can leave and for some reason counting threateningly seems to be working to get her to stop doing whatever she’s being asked not to do. Of course, I am not entirely sure what would happen if I ever finished counting to three. Hmm. Better think of a good consequence! We also try to be the same – if we promise her something as a reward we try to fulfill it. That way she knows that the road goes both ways – do a bad thing you get a bad outcome/punishment, do a good thing and you get a good outcome/treat. We’ll see how that goes.
So, let’s get to the pictures. Here are some of my favorite pictures taken of the girl in this past month, starting with the various activities that she has been up to:
[[image:2012-yaya50month-01.jpg:Playing dress-up with her cousins at Aunt Becky’s house:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-02.jpg:Red lifejacket, her favorite!:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-03.jpg:Love this wind-blown hair shot:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-07.jpg:At soccer practise in last spring’s team t-shirt:center:0]]
See how short her hair is in the above photo? She quite likes it this way and so do we!
[[image:2012-yaya50month-08.jpg:Sunlit happy tricyclist:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-09.jpg:Cheeky girl in the setting sun:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-12.jpg:Yaya in her new autumn Team Teal soccer gear:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-11.jpg:Swimming at the hotel pool in Chicago:center:0]]
Yaya is now able to put her face in the water (something she refused to do during the swimming lessons). She started doing it while in Florida. No doubt being tossed around in the sea where the waves go over her and on her face all the time taught her that if you keep your eyes and mouth closed, hold your breath and don’t inhale any of the water, nothing bad will happen and all you have is a wet face!
Also, now that Adik isn’t quite so little and vulnerable, not to mention a little more prepared to be separated from his milk bed Mama, Yaya gets more time to play with him! Adik loves to copy his big sister! Here are a couple of photos of the two together:
[[image:2012-yaya50month-04.jpg:Showing Adik one of her old puzzles and getting distracted by the TV:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-13.jpg:Helping to give Adik his nightly bottle:center:0]]
It’s actually quite difficult to get good pictures of the two of them together because invariably the photo is blurred because everyone is in motion, or one of more of them are blinking or they move out of the frame altogether! 🙂
Here are a few pictures of Yaya, our beautiful 50-month old girl, all by herself:
[[image:2012-yaya50month-05.jpg:This shot makes her look like a baby again, I think, and makes me all nostalgic:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-10.jpg:Our girl looks thoughtful – what is she plotting?:center:0]]
[[image:2012-yaya50month-14.jpg:Lovely deranged smile!:center:0]]
It has been another wonderful month for our little family. Happy 50 month birthday baby girl! We love you!
[[image:2012-yaya50month-06.jpg:Big smile from the big girl:center:0]]
