Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! January 2, 2012

Filed under: Uncategorized — Sally Ann @ 9:09 pm

We had an awesome, but ridiculously busy month of December with travel and activities. So busy, in fact, that we’ve declared January and February no travel months (aside from our anniversary trip without the girls!) Looking forward to some down time.

Abigail Grace

This girl is growing and changing so quickly, it’s unreal.

Her memory is really sharp, and she’ll randomly recall something that happened weeks or months ago in detail. She’ll also randomly burst into song (granted, she’s still just saying the words to songs instead of truly singing them, but still) and has started “singing” along to songs in the car.

Her day is one long narrative with songs interwoven—whether she has an audience or not.

Also along with her memory, she has the majority of her books memorized, and we’ll often catch her with a book open in her lap reading it out loud. Of course, she can’t read, but she’s got whole books in her head. Related: she does know her alphabet (capital letters) and is learning the phonics. She got an upper/lower case alphabet puzzle for Christmas, so hopefully we’ll start honing in on the “little” letters soon.

We’re in a phase right now where reading is her activity of choice, and it’s always me or David telling her “ok, reading time is over!” Seriously…10-15+ long books a day. I love Dr. Seuss, but man, his books are long.

She’s starting to play with Madilyn a little bit and really likes making her laugh (and will often report, “Mommy, I made Madilyn laugh! Yay!”).

While she’s saying “please” and “thank you” and other polite words with little prompting, we’re in a difficult phase behaviorally with whining and flat out disobedience. “Abigail, come here, please.” “NO MA’AM!” (walks opposite direction). Or, “Time to take a bath, Abigail,” (in a whiny voice) “I don’t want to…wah, wah, wah…” Sigh.

Hilarious quote from Abigail: “Mommy, one day I will have a king, and then I will have milk in my nipples!” Ha!

Madilyn Joy

She is so close to walking, it’s ridiculous. She even took a few steps tonight nearly unassisted (I was holding the back of her shirt so she didn’t fall forward). Maybe by our next post, she’ll be toddling around. It all started on December 11 when she figured out how to walk with her push toy. Since then, she’s been cruising all over the place, and climbs our stairs multiple times a day. She stayed standing without holding on to anything right around Christmas. She won’t let us force her to walk, though. Unlike Abigail at this age, if Madilyn wants to sit down, she just sits. Abigail couldn’t figure out how to sit down until after a year old.

I’m pretty sure she’s calling both me and David “Da-da!”, and that might even be her word for milk. “Bbbbaaaaaa” and “Dadadadada” are her most common “words,” that she uses at all volumes and all inflections. She’s especially vocal when pointing to any illuminated surface—whether it be a light, a tv, a computer, a reflection…crazy.

She’s pointing to everything and waving all the time, and she’s nodding a lot—although, we don’t know if she understands what that means. She mimicks much more than Abigail ever did. For example, at dinner the other night, Abigail put her hands above her head and said “Hurray!” Immediately, Madilyn put her hands up high and made a loud sound. She also plays a game with Abigail by tilting her head to the side and waiting for Abigail to copy before righting her head back up.

She’s figured out how to put things back into a container, so at least for now, cleaning up is fun for her—albeit, slow. She’s also enjoying turning pages in her board books if not actually reading them. I hope her attention span lengthens before too long so we can really get into reading!

We’re in a “I WANT MAMA!” phase right now, and I’m not sure how much of it is teething vs. separation anxiety vs. plain out “I WANT MAMA, AND THERE’S NO REAL REASON!” As a result, she’s super clingy to me and wants to be held way more than usual. And she’s very effectively communicating her dissatisfaction with whatever she’s unhappy with. Abigail took her toy? Disgusted yell. I put her down when she wanted to be held? All out banshee crying. Whew.

One perk is that at nap time and bedtime, she snuggles up on me. So nice!

Notable events

I’ve got to be honest, I’m really not up to writing about everything we did this month in detail, so here’s a fun list for my records. Between that and the videos/pictures below, I think you’ll get a good sense of what we’ve been up to!

Dinner with the Arnaudins, Christmas tree shopping at Boyd Mountain Farm, celebrating Dad’s birthday in Greenville, Bible study Christmas party and charades, Atlanta trip for a funeral for a dear friend’s infant son, making ornaments, craft night at Brittany’s, Abigail’s preschool party, play lodge wipe outs—Abigail busted her lip, and Madilyn bit through her tongue (ouch!), YMCA Christmas pageant, mall to see Santa Claus, Polar Express at Chick-Fil-A w/hot chocolate, Abigail in Greenville…David off work…we visited WCU campus, Christmas Eve in Columbia, Christmas day and dinner with neighbors, McGee Christmas in Spartanburg, loads of family time.

Slideshow, then videos, then individual pictures:

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Hanging ornaments
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