Amelia really has grown up quickly over the last few months. She’s been behind Katie’s development pace in just about everything up until now, so it’s been really interesting to seem how far she’s come so fast. By her second birthday, she could only say the most basic of words and couldn’t really put together phrases. Now she’s got all sorts of words coming out from strawberries to honeybees to all the Dora characters and even some phrases we wished she didn’t know like "Mia Do it" and "Go away". At least we know what’s on her mind now – she used to just scream and we’d have to guess what she was after. She is really comprehending things well now too, so when we ask her if she wants something she knows how to respond.
The interesting thing about this is how she keys off particular words. For example tonight I was talking to Katie about how she could have breakfast with me tomorrow since I will work from home. Amelia heard the word breakfast and said "roll-os" (her word for breakfast or cereal or oatmeal, I’m not sure, but it’s one of those three) and immediately sped off to the kitchen to sit in her booster seat. Even though it was 8:15 and time to go to bed, she was ready for some cereal.
Throughout the last several days even, she’s really gotten good at doing puzzles. She’s always been interested in puzzles since she has her mother’s dual powers of concentration and logic. She will literally sit at the puzzles and keep trying different piece arrangements until you come help her. She just doesn’t give up, even if it’s too hard for her. She also will try the same piece in every possible combination even though it might not connect to any of the existing pieces.
She now can do her 20 piece Dora puzzle all by herself and she’s getting close to being able to do most all 5 of the 24 piece puzzles we have. She’s even taking cracks at the tiny 70 piece puzzle and the floor-sized Dora alphabet puzzle (Yes – we have everything Dora, someday I’ll have to list it all). When we’re home with her, we don’t have to think of things to do to entertain her, if you stick a puzzle in front of her, she’ll be captivated for hours. She’ll keep doing the puzzle over and over again until you tell her it’s time to eat or give her another one.
As I mentioned in a few past posts, she’s also come a long ways on her potty training. I even stuck underwear on her tonight because she was wearing tighter pants and seemed to be sick of her diaper. It only lasted an hour, but it was a start and she is definitely thinking about going potty more and more. If we really pushed her on it, we could have her in underwear full time in a couple weeks. Imagine, no more diapers – that’s a world I’d like to live in.
Eric's space 