identifying stars

This morning as she was rapidly flipping through the mini "Goodnight Moon" boardbook, she stopped at the page with stars. She looked over to her left at the shower curtain in the bathroom (which has stars on it) and points. She then points at the stars in the book and points at the stars on the shower curtain. It was exciting! She totally identified the stars and associated the shapes.

she did some other pretty cool things today that i wanted to post about...but i'm so tired that i now forget...

she has been needing more and more interaction and wants to play WITH me... because she is a toddler now and needs more... so we played "hide & seek" a bunch today...where i just hide behind a door, or a corner, or wall, and she has to find me...not too difficult, but she LOVES it and cracks up & gets all excited when she "finds me."

i LOVE hannah!

oh how I LOOOVE our Hannah! yes this afternoon/evening she was screaming a ton and screeching and just exercising her lungs and driving me crazy. But it was b/c I was stressed about this evening's event - i dunno - expectations and such stressing me out. But I DO love her! And all of her cuteness and adorableness!

I mean I started this whole photography thing BECAUSE of Hannah. To photograph her and document HER! And produce beautiful artwork of Hannah. But here I am photographing all sorts of other people's kids and other people...and I don't do as much photographing of Hannah as I would like anymore...or working on her photos...maybe I need to rethink things???

I miss her when I'm not around her. I posted about being away from family tonight... and wanted to post a tidbit here too... I mean tonight's event was really last minute. I was actually looking forward to a day of hanging out with family. Sarah Diane called Friday morning to see if I could help out/work Saturday night...and I didn't want to turn down the opportunity. But work away from home is time away from Hannah and Isaac.

I really do cherish our time together.

My thoughts

Okay...I wrote a post already...and it contains my thoughts that include Hannah...and instead of writing again or not having a post b/c I don't have time to write, here's the link:
http://grace-musings.blogspot.com/2008/06/family-motherhood.html

So fun!

Hannah's gotten so fun to be with! She understands what I say and she responds very well. She's smart and interactive! She's playful and so very cheerful. Her smile is stunning and her laugh is infectious.

This morning we've played with various balls. Her throwing skills have improved. We've played with finger puppets, she loves putting them on her finger, and she was mimicking me waving them to music. We've been listening to Mozart Divertimentos all morning. She loves to dance, and she's so cute when she bops up and down or spins. She likes to kiss her mini-baby dolls and wants you to kiss them too (she holds them up to your face). She loves to scribble on her magna doodles. She carries her bowl of cheerios (uncovered) around the house, eating them neatly from the bowl. (Versus the shaking of cheerios out from the covered bowl in previous months). She likes feeding cheerios to mommy too.

Kids grow well in dirt

As all kids don't grow without a little bit of dirt, I took Hannah outside to enjoy a few moments of fresh air. I really just needed to cut a few leaves off our basil plant for dinner, but I got carried away. As I looked up from my aggressive weeding program, I notice our dear sweet Hannah playing gleefully in the dirt. She happily sat on a potato mound. She dusted off the top of the mound with her sweeping arm moment that she is quite famous for at dinnertime. She put her hand to her mouth several times, which I know will just make DW cringe. She enjoyed the dirt and being outside. Continuing but never boring with the mounds of dirt on the potato row in the garden, she quite curiously made her way for the tomato plants. She is classically drawn to the tomato plants. I don't know what it is about the tomato that attracts her so. Is it the sparkling green leaves sharply contrasted with dazzling red fruit? Probably! But anyway, as is her custom she pulled tomatoes off the plant. Three to be exact. She was happy as a lark with those tomatoes in her hand, and nothing is better than seeing your child happy. As I sit writing this note, I realize that kids grow well in dirt.

Teeth-brushing milestone

Today was a teeth-brushing milestone for us!
She let me brush her teeth without fuss for the first time in a long time. She opened her mouth voluntarily and wanted me to brush her teeth. She let me brush her teeth lots of times (on separate occasions today)...and she brushed her own teeth rather well by herself too. She's learning a lot and developing and maturing.

Poo update:
She finally poo-ed in the toilet today! Yay! But not in the morning, it was closer to noon. She's not been going 1st thing in the morning consistently. She also pooed again on the toilet this afternoon upon waking from her nap.

For the past week, she's been refusing to poo in the toilet and I've had to clean up like 1-3 messy diapers a day! She used to consistently just poo once in the morning on the toilet and that was it. She's not communicating to us...she knows how & she knows she should...but she doesn't want to go on the toilet.

The past 2 weeks, she's gone poo a lot - multiple times a day, and even after her morning poo on the toilet. It's been throwing me off. I guess she's growing...and eating more...and it's gotta go somewhere...

She's usually good about heading to the bathroom when we say "poo,poo? Hannah?" She has even done the bath sign to mean bathroom and that she needed to poo before. She'd also head to the bathroom when we'd say "bath" or "xi zao." But the heading to the bathroom was not a consistent thing...

anyways...

She was really super duper happy and cheerful today. She got a nice long nap in the afternoon (1:30-5:30) and she woke up really happy. she was happy in the morning too...

(Which was helpful since mommy has a huge wkload after photographing an event this weekend...and she's been a bit backlogged on other photog items... and has been revamping and learning about website stuff...)

Our monkey is 16 months

So as of yesterday Hannah is 16 months old! I was going to post yesterday...but with everything going on somehow by the end of the day, I fell asleep and then posting didn't happen. What's new? That seems to be how everyday is... I don't even watch TV!

Alright...so yesterday we had 2 playdates. One in the morning (with C & Stanley and one in the afternoon with D & Layla). The one in the afternoon didn't start out as a playdate, but ended up as one since Hannah refused to sleep! she didn't nap all day...besides the point...

So in the afternoon, I'm in the dining area with Delilah and we're talking, I turn around to see Hannah way up on the 6 ft ladder. Yep! She just helped herself and climbed all the way up the ladder to like 4 - 5ft up.

The ladder had been out for a few weeks now... next to the curtains since they're still a "work in progress" (one of my many projects that are "work in progress" status). She'd play underneath it or what not, maybe climb up one rung and sit on it, but never climb up more than one rung! And this time...she climbed all the way up...and she laughed...and then she climbed all the way down...and did it over and over. She certainly enjoyed herself climbing up and down.

When I first saw her, my heart skipped a beat, but then I realized she was okay and so I let her climb up and down. But needless to say, the ladder was taken down soon after daddy got home. We probably won't be giving our little monkey more climbing opportunities with that ladder.

There are more milestones I should probably document...but I have a ton more work and stuff to do....until later...

All 4 Molars

Um...so I've been neglectful of blogging...so all 4 molars are now in. I think molar #4 came in sometime around the same time as molar #3...but when I peeked in her mouth yesterday as she had it wide open, I saw all 4 molars all in their white glory.

Self-feeding

Before I forget...she's been really successful at self-feeding with a spoon out of a bowl for the past few weeks. She improves at it every time. I've been giving her either oatmeal in a bowl with a spoon, or yogurt with a spoon (sometimes in a bowl, sometimes in the yogurt cup).

She's been rather good with a fork for awhile. She stabs the food and is good at getting it in her mouth.

Oh how they grow and learn...it's really cool to observe child development. And sometimes I'm still like, wow, she's MY daughter! I have a daughter?!?! She's sooo cute!

PSP Slim

This is Hannah-related, so I'm going to post here.

A few weeks ago (probably 2 weeks ago) while daddy was at an EQ activity Saturday evening, Hannah & I were invited to our next door neighbor's house for a BBQ with peeps from the neighborhood. Well, after dinner, Hannah was playing with a PSP Slim that was "laying around." She was curious and messing with it, and I thought it's okay, and didn't take it away from her. Plus she was next to the couch with 2 high schoolers playing with their PSPs.

A bit later, I looked over to the living room, and Hannah no longer had the PSP. One of the high schoolers had it and there was more than just one solid piece in his hands. The PSP was in two pieces. At first I thought, oh she just undid the battery cover (like she does with our remotes). Alas, if only that simple. Nope. Our sweet little Hannah had chewed through the disk cover, popped it off, and broke it from the spring. Since this was my 1st encounter with a PSP slim up close, I didn't realize how the spring-loaded cover UMD drive worked. Upon closer inspection, I realized this was a greater problem than I thought.

Our neighbor was pretty cool about it, just wanted it fixed. But I was stressed out b/c I had no idea what it'd cost to fix, how to fix it, etc... I just knew I didn't want to have to buy a new PSP.

So needless to say, that night I went home and researched a bunch of stuff on the internet about PSPs, figured out WHAT needed to be fixed, and bought the new part (the door) to fix the PSP. Thank goodness for Ebay! able to get it a lot cheaper than it'd be otherwise and waaay cheaper than I thought it'd be.

I waited patiently for the part to arrive in the mail. But when it did arrive, I was busy with photography stuff, and so dh attacked the PSP project. Well, apparently our tools were not quite small enough. So I took all the parts of the PSP slim that he'd taken apart and put them in a baggie.

Fast forward another week...Friday night. Dh had gone to Lowe's earlier in the evening and picked up a couple of things to work on our backyard and other stuff (including surprising me with an orchid plant - YAY! - and a 000 phillips head screwdriver). While I put Hannah to sleep tonight, dh started fixing the PSP...again. And by the end of the night, he got it all put back together! Phew!

We were careful about what we let Hannah get into before, but then I grew more lenient. So now I am much more careful again. She is one clever girl. She uses her teeth to open lots of caps, bottles, etc. And she can get into a lot more than you'd think. She's usually really good about not getting into stuff she's not supposed to, but curiosity most times wins over with novel items.

She's so cute about things that it's hard to get upset at her because she's really rather bright and she's exploring and learning about the world around her.

Daddy's rantings

So daddy wrote this insightful post...which wouldn't have been possible without the addition of Hannah to our family. Since father's day is coming up this month, it's appropriate that he's reflecting on how life has changed with fatherhood:
http://justusize.blogspot.com/2008/06/kids.html

And I thought I'd mention it here, b/c I don't know how many of you loyal readers visit Hannah's daddy's blog...that's a mouthful.