75 months of the girl!
[[image:2014-yaya75month-09.jpg:Yaya smiles in the shadows and light:center:0]]
* Mouse over the pictures for captions
October has been pretty action packed. We have been back and forth to and from the new gig (Tampa, Florida) twice in October, and everyone is pretty much travel weary by now. But Yaya and the Adik have done well, despite all the carting around. We managed a weekend getaway to the beach (more later), Vin attended a wedding and we saw some friends, and of course there was Halloween. Busy month all around.
In the food status section, Yaya has also had an action filled month of trying new foods! She tried:
* Superman flavored ice-cream (red / yellow / blue kind of berry or tutti frutti sort of flavor)
* Blueberry pie (she liked mostly the filling but was surprisingly not fond of the crust)
* Fresh Blueberry (she did not like the seed inside but the taste was OK. Conclusion, enjoyed the blueberry pie filling more)
* Grape Lollipop (brand: Dum dums, received as part of her trick or treat loot and she sucked on it for a while which is more than we’ve seen of her tasting stuff!)
* Kitkat (also part of trick or treat loot, but she claimed she did not like it which I find unfathomable! Who doesn’t like kitkats?)
Reading status: still the same. It does seem like a confidence issue – she doesn’t want to try it because she isn’t assured of her success. I know we have to also teach her to fail gracefully and to learn from her failures, but it doesn’t make it any easier to help her learn to read. When she’s not trying, she’s totally fine. Like when she sees a word or thinks about it on her own. It’s when she is asked to read that she seems to freeze and dig her heels in. Even words that she is familiar with seem to be blocked. On the other hand, she does seem to do well when we have oral pop quizzes (thank you to Mr Patrick for giving us these drills in Form 3). Her knowledge of animals is really quite good. We had a quiz about animals and it was quite detailed (type of animal: mammal, reptile, fish, etc.) and what the traits were of each type of animal and she did very well there. She is also quite good with riddles, surprising us with some of her answers. Her oral arithmetic also seems quite spot on and she can count to at least three hundred (yes, I witnesseed this and actually wanted to beg her to stop). We have discussed “infinity” and why it is an imaginary number and she seems to grasp the concept. She likes it when we relate to how much we love her and her brother. 🙂 We have also discussed the concepts of negative numbers because you can have less than zero (this was not an easy concept to grasp or explain) but she does seem to understand it and uses it correctly.
We have interesting conversations with Yaya. Sometimes she just wants to talk at you and requires the briefest of grunts and “oh really?” and “interesting” every so often, and she will keep on talking. Sometimes the conversation centers around defining words and sentences on how to use the words. Sometimes she likes to talk about our history together (recounting Adik’s birth, certain trips, etc.). Sometimes we just shoot the breeze. One conversation that we had was concerning alarms. Yaya corrected me when I said that “The alarm went off” and said didn’t I mean that “the alarm went on”? And we had to discuss why there are exceptions in the English language, and why alarms going off was not the same as turning the alarm off. It did make us think though!
OK let’s get to the pictures. We start with some in Ohio photos:
[[image:2014-yaya75month-11.jpg:Hobo Yaya goes hunting for trains:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-12.jpg:Getting her six-month dental checkup:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-13.jpg:Happy Yaya! No fuss this time!:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-15.jpg:Let’s measure Yaya against artwork Yaya!:center:0]]
See how much she has grown since Adik was born?
[[image:2011_becky_17.jpg:Yaya in December 2011:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-14.jpg:Hello Kitty face paint at the Loveland Farmer’s Market:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-05.jpg:Hello Kitty selfie!:center:0]]
And, speaking of selfies, Yaya borrowed Papa’s phone and took these:
[[image:2014-yaya75month-17.jpg:I’m looking at the Yaya in the mirror:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-18.jpg:Serious selfie:center:0]]
Now some on the road pictures. It was warm enough to hang out at the outdoor pool in Tampa after work:
[[image:2014-yaya75month-02.jpg:Getting ready to go swimming!:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-03.jpg:Her hair is long enough for braids now:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-04.jpg:Happily swimming:center:0]]
Here is Yaya, sitting like a lady, eating her pizza for dinner:
[[image:2014-yaya75month-06.jpg:When did she get so lanky?:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-07.jpg:Sleeping angel on her pull out sofa bed:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-08.jpg:Let’s make funny faces together!:center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-16.jpg:This is how Adik wakes Yaya up, by trying to lie on her face (his trademark wrestling move):center:0]]
[[image:2014-yaya75month-10.jpg:Yaya wants to go with spiffed-up Papa to the wedding!:center:0]]
Happy 75-month birthday, baby girl! We love you!!!
[[image:2014-yaya75month-01.jpg:My pretty baby:center:0]]
