Yet another month has gone by! Allie was 19 months old last Monday, February 22nd. It’s quite amazing how quickly time flies!
[[image:allie529a.jpg:Yaya and Mama:center:0]]
* Mouse over the pictures for added captions
This has been quite the exciting month! For one thing, we have had a lot of snow, both here at home and on our road trips to New Jersey. It’s craziness! (Stay tuned for some snow pictures). And on top of that, Allie just keeps growing and developing. She is eating a lot of table foods and uses the food I make for her more like a base. It’s supplemented with all kinds of different things that Vin and I are eating. Plus she’s drinking a ton of whole milk out of her sippy cup. Linguistically, she may be on the verge of saying “Mama” (fingers crossed). She seems to be experimenting more now and possibly hopefully the wheels are turning in there. Maybe she’ll just skip little words and go directly to “Don’t press the red button, Mama, that’s the self-destruct button”. Ha! I’ll settle for a “Mama” every now and again. She keeps adding to her animal and other object noises repertoire (big dog with a big bark, train’s whistle, etc.), I don’t know how she keeps it straight. And her comprehension is amazing. She knows a bunch of facial and body parts, pointing it out on not just herself, Vin and me, but also her toys, pictures in her books as well as the drawings that Vin and I make for her. She is obsessed with writing implements and has been confined only to crayons since she keeps drawing on everything. Try getting pen marks off of the sofa, I tell you that is not fun. The crayon seems easier to come off plus it doesn’t write on everything like pens do. I don’t know why it is that when I’m trying to jot something down on paper the friggin’ pen refuses to work but when Allie has the same pen and goes to write on upholstery, no problemo, ink gushes out! We do a lot of crayon drawings of cats and other animals, and stick figures (OK neither Vin nor I have Hisham’s artistic talent but we try) and Allie does recognize the cats, bears, fishes and other things that we draw for her. She sees paper and any writing implement, she starts meowing to demand that we draw her a cat (quite possible her favorite animal ever). She also can carry out some increasingly more complicated commands (e.g., go get Mama’s shoes, put the sticker on your nose, turn around, etc.).
She is very loving and affectionate, and enjoys hugging and kissing everything. Yes, everything. People, toys, books, inanimate objects. And she demands that we kiss everything too. I never thought the day would come when I would be able to say “Today I kissed a rock and a pine cone” but there you go. It happened. And I would gladly kiss those things again since it made Allie so happy. 😉
There’s also a lot of dancing going on in the house. She’s getting to be quite the music dictator – she has her favorite musical genre (currently Jackson 5, motown) and even expresses preference of music over whatever else we might be doing. When that girl wants to get down and boogie, she goes straight for the stereo remote and hands it to us. Then if she doesn’t like the song that’s playing she demands that we change it until we get to a song that she approves. It’s hilarious, a music critic at 19 months! She is still constant in her love of Jeopardy! and applauds Alex Trebek quite enthusiastically when he is introduced. Plus she does a lot of singing (melodies only) – the theme to Jeopardy!, the A-B-C song, Itsy-bitsy spider, Hallelujah and You Belong To Me (these last two from the soundrack to Shrek). And she seems to be able to sing along with us with all kinds of music. It’s really quite fun.
Oh and she has two more teeth sprouting so she will have six teeth soon!
I realize that was a lot of chatter before we go to the pictures of how she spent her 19 month birthday, but both Vin and I forgot about it that morning and therefore did not take any pictures until mid-morning. Hey, it was Monday. I was working and Vin had his hands full with Allie. But finally we remembered, and here she is, mid-morning, hanging out on her little makeshift bed in the living room:
[[image:allie516a.jpg:I’m so not sleepy Papa:center:0]]
We have been trying to get her to nap in her crib or on her little bed (and not in the car or on Mama) and some days we succeed. Some days, not so much. This day was a not so successful day.
[[image:allie517a.jpg:Haha I threw my barrette on the floor!:center:0]]
[[image:allie518a.jpg:But not the Hippopotamus:center:0]]
[[image:allie519a.jpg:Yellow pants, red pants, green pants, oops!:center:0]]
And Papa walks into the room:
[[image:allie520a.jpg:Hi Papa!:center:0]]
So we gave up and Vin took her out for a drive/nap:
[[image:allie521a.jpg:Fast asleep:center:0]]
[[image:allie522a.jpg:Just woke up:center:0]]
Then she ran around while she ate lunch:
[[image:allie523a.jpg:Watching Phineas and Ferb:center:0]]
[[image:allie524a.jpg:Pretending to feed herself:center:0]]
The phone in the living room has become her new plaything and has to be unplugged a lot of the time. Just look:
[[image:allie526a.jpg:Hello? Who’s there?:center:0]]
[[image:allie527a.jpg:Can you hear me now?:center:0]]
[[image:allie525a.jpg:Papa, it’s for you:center:0]]
The rest of the day was a blur of mischievous shenanigans:
[[image:allie530a.jpg:Digging holes in the nerf ball:center:0]]
[[image:allie532a.jpg:Selecting music:center:0]]
[[image:allie528a.jpg:Rowdy Yaya:center:0]]
[[image:allie534a.jpg:More rowdiness!:center:0]]
[[image:allie531a.jpg:Yaya and Lily:center:0]]
[[image:allie533a.jpg:See the new teeth coming in?:center:0]]
After another hectic day, it was bath and bedtime for little girls. It’s been another awesome month, and it’s just amazing how quickly time passes. Every moment of every day is action-packed, and then it’s bedtime! 🙂 Can’t wait to see what the next month brings! Happy 19-month birthday, baby!!
And to close the entry, one of my favorite pictures of the day:
[[image:allie535a.jpg:Cheek to cheek with Papa:center:0]]
See you next month!
