Speaking Up

Well, the lazy days of summer are upon us. I've been doing my best to keep Violet busy, and she's been doing her best to keep my attention on her 99 percent of the time. So far I'd say she's winning.

Violet meets a kitten for the first time. She is still a bit unclear on the meaning of "soft hands". No animals were harmed.

It is amazing to me how quickly Violet is growing and changing. Every day brings a new, surprising discovery about what she has learned. For instance, I was singing the Itsy Bitsy Spider to her the other day, and all of a sudden she started doing the spider motion! I guess she learned it in daycare. But even more, when we read a book together and came to the picture of the spider, she started doing the song motions. She totally connected the two. It's that kind of stuff that gets me - seeing her building those connections.

She's also learned quite a few words over the last week or two. Top three are: cheese, milk, juice. (Sensing a trend?) In fact, opening the refrigerator door is done at your own peril, since it is always accompanied by a little monkey hollering for "yoose!" (juice) and pitching a rather impressive fit if the beverage is not rapidly delivered. At least she's also learning the sign for "please" and is always good about enthusiastically signing "thank you" if I remind her.

Two other vocabulary words added lately are "stuck" and "hot". Violet was hanging out in the neighbor's playset the other day while I stood by talking when all of a sudden I was interrupted by cries of "tut! tut!" I had no idea what Violet was talking about until I finally turned to her and realized her foot was stuck between the fort and the slide. Smart girl. The "hot" thing is a little more complicated. She calls our coffee mugs "hot," for indeed they are. But lately she's been asking if everything is hot, from her food to the playground equipment. To be fair, the slides and swings sometimes do get pretty steamy under our fair Georgia sun. And true, sometimes food straight from the pot to plate is a little warm to the touch. But more and more I'm having to convince my little friend that "it's not hot, you can eat it... you can touch it... it's not hot".

And since Violet is doing so much growing and changing, I decided it was time for our house to do a little accommodating. I've decided to turn our sunroom, previously the room we eat in off the kitchen, into Violet's playroom. There is no way I'm going to get her to play in our bonus room upstairs all by herself, especially since the room is rapidly looking like we're auditioning for Hoarders: Buried Alive. Instead, I think we'll have a better chance of getting Noodlehead to play independently if she's more conveniently located in the middle of all the action (read: within eyeshot of mommy at all times). It's still a work in progress, but at least we have some new storage to hold the migration of all her toys from the living room. That's right, we are reclaiming our house! Ideally, a cute rug, some beanbags or other seating, and a tv/dvd set up will follow. We'll need to downgrade the size our our table and put up some kid-friendly artwork (Ikea, I hear your siren song!) to make it complete, but I think we have a good start.

Exploring the new playroom. Also, cutest outfit ever, a la Costco!