Catching up on Julie-isms

Fun pictures soon...

June 23
Julie just saw a wedding picture of me and Ben, and when I asked her if I had a pretty dress on, she answered, "Yeah! Pincess!" Pretty much made my week.

June 30
Julie has asked for a quesadilla for breakfast every day this week. Today she finally consented to having eggs for breakfast instead (her options other days had all included eggs, cereal, and toast). Then when it came time for lunch today, she asked for eggs. *facepalm*

July 1
I love that Julie talks in her sleep. Mostly it's mumbles. It's cute though. She fell asleep on the couch tonight, cuddled up with Ben watching a movie. When he woke up and slowly sat up with her, to take her up to bed, so began muttering random things as her eyes confusedly opened and closed. Darn cute.

July 10
Conversation with Julie while I was cleaning up dinner:

Me (pointing to my belly): Julie, who's in here? In Mama's tummy?
Julie: (blank stare, licking her fingers)
Me: Is it Baby Robyn?
Julie: No, it's green!

(In her defense, my dress is black and white and green, so I was likely pointing at a green spot.)

July 10
I just leaned in for a kiss with Julie, and she decided that the perfect time to burp was just prior to the point of contact. It smelled like leftover quiche. Disgusting.

July 14
Julie seemed to have a little gas tonight, but couldn't quite get it out. She kept saying, "stuck" and then ten seconds later, I'd hear a toot and an "es me!" ("excuse me!"). It was pretty comical.

July 15
Julie has recently decided that she actually wants to draw with crayons, which she hasn't previously been very interested in. Unfortunately, she just opens the nearest book or grabs the nearest piece of mail, etc., and starts coloring on that. I've been trying to teach her that we only color on paper (or in special coloring books, which she has), but she always gets upset. This morning she found a crayon in her purse, got excited, and then pointed to the paper tray of our printer and asked for paper. Yay!!

July 15
Julie has been trying to blow up a water balloon with her mouth for the last 10 minutes nonstop. It's pretty hilarious.

July 22
A thunderstorm has started, and guess where Julie is? Yep...upstairs on the couch, staring out the window, absolutely enthralled.

July 27
On the road yesterday we passed a Target truck. Julie got excited and pointed out "red store! red store!" I was so proud.

August 11
Funny moment earlier: I was on the phone with my mom, while working in the kitchen. Julie came running upstairs calling, "Mommy, I got it! I did it, Mommy!" When she found me, she stuck her finger in my face and said, "Look, Mommy! I got it!" There was a tiny patch of raw skin at the bottom of her nail bed where she'd clearly just successfully removed a hangnail. She was so proud of herself.

August 13
My girl is tough. Remember that hangnail from earlier in the week? She's continued all week to pick at that spot on her finger, and tonight while we were watching TV, Ben had fallen asleep, and she woke him up to show him her finger, dripping with blood. Then we went up two flights of stairs to wash it off and put a Band-aid on it, and she whimpered the whole time, but didn't really cry. She was very calm and matter-of-fact. I love her. I was sitting in the same room, but she went to Daddy because she's in a Daddy phase right now. Also, by the time we rinsed the blood off, it was starting to dry a little, so I had to rub at the spot to get it all off, and then press a paper towel onto it to finish stopping the blood, and she still was super tough the whole time. I'm so proud of my brave little girl. She was clearly distraught, but still calm. It's especially impressive when you consider that she hasn't had a regular meal (plenty of snacks, though) in over 24 hours, since we were camping and she was just so excited about everything new and different, and then she had three naps today because she was so totally wiped.

August 19
Julie: Mommy, I want string cheese.
Me: Sweetie, you just had breakfast. (about an hour earlier...she slept today)
Julie: I want string cheese.
Me: You can have string cheese, but later. Not right now.
Julie: (whining now) No! I want Daddy!

More Julie-isms

Generally:
Julie is learning uses of the word-phrase "okay." Her versions are cute: "ohay" or "tay!"

Julie likes to come into a room where Ben or I are, and say, "Hi Mommy! (or Hi Daddy!) What's doin'?"

June 9:
Julie is walking around the basement with her phone, jabbering away. She came up to me, held the phone out, and said, "Say 'hi, Grammy!" I asked her if she wanted to call Grammy on the real phone (and showed it to her), but apparently she's content with her pretend conversation for now.

June 8:
I was watching a video this evening with short interviews from some of the actors in the Harry Potter movies. Julie recognized them, despite different hair and facial hair styles, and being out of context. She started pointing at the screen and excitedly calling out, "HeePot! HeePot!"

June 8:
Julie is watching Strawberry Shortcake right now, but she pronounces it along the lines of "Sputcake" which is, of course, quite amusing.

June 7:
Major thunderstorm this morning. Every time it rolled, Julie got excited and exclaimed, "fffffffffunnerrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

June 7:
I tripped on my way up the stairs and fell at the landing. I braced my fall with my hands, but Julie was worried. She was playing in the sink in the bathroom on the landing (giving Donald Duck a bath, by the way), and she came out when she heard me fall, and said, "you okay?" It was very sweet.

June 5:
Julie got bug bites at the Daddy-daughter campout this weekend -- all over both elbows. Yesterday they looked fine. This morning, a few are scabbed over pretty badly from her scratching at them. Unfortunately, she gets upset when we remind her not to scratch. She's come up with two alternatives: (1) she tries to kiss them all better herself, and (2) she uses the hand of her stuffed Donald Duck to scratch them.

May 31:
For awhile, when I'd answer the phone (or Julie pretended to), she'd say, "Ho?"

May 29:
Julie has started blogging. She doesn't put anything in her posts -- she just posts them. If she ever actually does start typing in them, I might actually leave them up, instead of deleting them.

Here are a couple of recent photos of Julie from a trip to the local Children's Museum. Julie loved making the water splash, but instinctively kept ducking from it at the same time.

Julie-isms

Some recent Julie-isms. I usually post these on Facebook as quick status updates, but there have been some cute ones recently, and I know that grandparents and great-grandparents don't see them on Facebook, so I thought I'd share here, too.

May 18:
I've been hearing thunder for the last 20-30 minutes or so, very slowly moving closer to the house. In the last couple of minutes, there have been two loud(ish) cracks much closer. Each time, Julie gasps, looks at me, and gets a huge grin on her face. It's fun.

May 16:
Julie has moved into a new phase. It's the "Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom, Mom" phase. So far, I actually enjoy it, but that's because she's only been calling me by name for about two months.

May 14:
On our way back from dropping Ben off for a campout this morning:

Me: "Are we going to have fun today, just Mama and Julie?"
Julie: "NO!"

May 11:
Well that was fun...I just started my morning off with a call to poison control. Julie was up before me this morning (as usual), and decided that it was a good morning to open the pantry (which is locked) by pulling hard enough that the lock just comes off the wall (she discovered this about a week ago), and climbing six shelves up to the top to get my Vitamin D gummies, and then eating half the bottle -- about 75,000-80,000 units worth. Poison Control, fortunately, said that she shouldn't have any symptoms from it, though.

April 27:
We stopped at Target today and came home with a Leaptop. The smaller handhelds are what Julie has tried to play with at people's houses, but they're way too advanced for her still. We got her one that focuses on learning the alphabet, has music, and does animal sounds. So far, she loves it. She opens it, turns it on, it says, "Hi!" and she answers right back: "Hi!"

April 13:
I just gave Julie peanut butter on her celery for the first time -- she loved it. I had some, too, for probably the first time since kindergarten.

April 8:
Me: I keep forgetting to tell you this. Two nights ago, around bedtime, Julie had her little plastic pliers. She kept opening and closing them around her hair, like in a cutting motion. I didn't dare say the word 'cut' and I think I may have even cut Brandon off abruptly when he started to. I took her up to bed, and as I laid her down to change into her jammies, she opened and closed them around my hair, and said "cut hair." We're in trouble.

Ben: It looks like I shot myself in the foot by taking her to see Tangled

Me: I'm not sure how much it has to do with Tangled -- this is the age when kids start to think about cutting their hair. But it could be Tangled -- she's been talking about hair a lot more lately than she did before.

Naps happen

Sometimes they happen exactly when and where they need to, regardless of where that may be.

This was last week in G-ma's (Ben's mom's) sewing room:






Then today, back home again:





Yes, that's a storage ottoman. And yes, I moved her to the couch after taking the pictures.

Family resemblance

Julie still takes naps most days, but she doesn't always take them in her bed anymore. In fact, she usually doesn't. She'll get a couple of "friends" and cuddle up under a blanket on the couch and go to sleep, or sometimes just curl up in an armchair. I don't complain about where she sleeps, as long as she actually does take a nap.

Yesterday, it was in the armchair in the basement. When she first fell asleep, she was sprawled across it, looking comfortable. At some point during her nap, she shifted and curled up like this:





A minute or two after I took these photos, she shifted again, but woke up while I was trying to grab the camera again. Her face was still buried in the corner of the chair, but instead of her little bum sticking up in the air, her legs were hanging down over the edge, so her toes were barely dragging along the floor. In that respect, she is very much her father's daughter. He can sleep anywhere, and has even been known to fall asleep while standing up talking to someone.

But wait, the pictures above look familiar...check me out, in November 1985:

A busy day

Julie has had a very busy day today.

First, there was this. It happened in about 15 minutes, though clearly it doesn't require that long. This is the second time in a week she's done this with my herbs and spices. Before I could clean any of it up, however, I had to find a large bath towel to soak up all the water on the floor. She loves to play with water.









And then there was this. Julie's first encounter with markers.

I tried to take a picture, but she went running away from me. She came back just moments later, carrying "her" camera.



It really is hard to be mad when she looks at me like this. And I guess I'm not mad. Not really. It's still pretty easy to be frustrated, though. I actually think the cuteness fuels the frustration.

Oh yeah, and it's only 2:30.

Julie's newest hobby

My point-and-shoot camera broke last year. Just stopped working. I was very sad. I still have it laying around, and Julie pulled it out of a drawer a couple days ago and started "taking pictures" with it. She's pretty cute.






Here's her trademark "silly face."

Blowing kisses!

Conversations with a two-year-old

Julie's favorite word this week is "yeah," with a few "no"s thrown in here and there. Here's our conversation last night at bedtime:

Me: Julie, are you ready for bed?
Julie: No
Me: (trying to switch her to "yeah"s) Julie, do you love Mama?
Julie: Yeah
Ben: Do you love Mama so much that you want her to put you to bed tonight? (Ben usually puts her to bed)
Julie: No

(laughter from all)

Me: Julie, are you ready for bed?
Julie: No
Me: Is it time for bed?
Julie: No
Ben: Mama's going to put you to bed.
Julie: No
Me: Do you want to stay up all night?
Julie: Yeah

I then got up to go take my shoes off before taking her up to bed. During those few second, she beelined for the basement to get away from me.

The kitchen help

Julie is entering that phase where she like to do everything she sees me doing. She loves to wear my aprons. Luckily, I have more than one, so when she sees me put one on, there's still another of mine she can wear. It's pretty funny, because it's twice as tall as she is, and it hangs way low off her neck. The ties and the bottom half of the apron drag between her legs as she walks, but she loves it.

A little over a month ago, I visited my parents in Connecticut. My mom got Julie a little toddler-sized apron she could wear in the kitchen with me. Julie loves it, and now wants to wear it anytime she's in the kitchen, even if it's not "helping" with the cooking.





Sticking one's tongue out always makes a tough job easier.



I thought these two shots were hilarious. I caught Julie in the middle of double sneezes.



One of Julie's chores is to help put away the dishes. She pulls out all the silverware and hands it to me, and I put it away. When we finished the normal flatware, she started pulling the prep utensils out of the back end of the basket. I don't normally let her play with scissors.

Mama's little helper

Julie is so funny. I usually keep the printer turned off, because she likes to push random buttons on it, causing the scanning program to spontaneously open on the computer monitor, or the printer to make a copy of nothing. The power button is out of her reach (too far back), but there's also a little tray on the front that flips down and extends (to hold the exiting paper), or folds up and closes off the opening. Julie occasionally likes to play with the tray: open, close, open, close. She's generally pretty gentle with it, so I don't mind. I turned on the printer just now to print a recipe for dinner, and Julie came sprinting over from the doorway to open the tray for me. She stared eagerly into the opening, knowing that a sheet of paper would soon be forthcoming. As soon as it was all the way out (and the rollers had let go of it), she snatched it up and handed it to me.

I bet that when I go downstairs to start making dinner, she wants to put my apron on to help me.

Toddler communication

As a follow-up to this post, I thought I'd give a little update on Julie's communication skills to date. She is rapidly expanding her repertoire, but still seems to be a little lazy when it comes to actual speech. She has many more signs than words, and she doesn't necessarily understand appropriate context/use for all her signs (for example, she knows "yes" and "no" but doesn't know how to use them as responses to questions, but she loves signing them). The words/phrases in italics are not new since the last post.

Words (or at least variants of them):

1. All done
2. More
3. Doggy
4. Water
5. Dance
6. Where is she?
7. Dots
8. Cheese
9. Cereal
10. Fishy
11. Read
12. Book
13. Ball
14. Shoes
15. Banana
16. Eye
17. Uh-oh
18. Down
19. Shower

(19 total)

Signs that Julie uses (some of these are also words that she speaks):

1. More
2. All done
3. Daddy
4. Water
5. Milk
6. Dog
7. Cat
8. Fish
9. Duck (I don't know what the actual sign is, but she opens and closes her hand in a "quack quack" movement)
10. Bee (again, I don't know what the actual sign is, but she buzzes her hand around while making a buzzing sound)
11. Monkey (yet again, I don't know the actual sign, but she pats the top of her head saying "oh, oh!")
12. Elephant (throws her arm up next to her head while making a high-pitched buzz)
13. Eat
14. Wash hands
15. Yes
16. No
17. Read
18. Book
19. Potty
20. Juice
21. Bath
22. Socks
23. Please
24. Play
25. Bike
26. Frog
27. Horse
28. Banana
29. Cracker
30. Bear
31. High five
32. Blow kiss
33. Thirsty
34. Diaper

(34 total)

Blabbermouth

I thought I'd post a list of Julie's communication skills. She understands almost everything we say to her. She's obedient to instructions (including throwing her own napkins/wipes in the trash after a meal), and responds well to spoken words. She talks all the time -- loves it. She doesn't, however, have very many words that she actually says. She talks but doesn't really speak, if that makes sense.

Words or phrases that Julie uses on a regular basis:

• More (mo?)
• All done/all gone (ah-dun) (applies to self or anyone else's plate within sight)
• Doggy (dah)
• Dots (dah) (the backing of a quilt my mom made for Julie is polka dots)
• Where is it?/Where'd it go? (whuh is uh?) (applies to objects or people)
• There it is! (uh-uh-uh, with the same intonation we use) (use when playing peek-a-boo or sometimes when not)
• Where's Julie? (whuh ju?)
• Water (war)
• Dance (daa) (usually in the car or when I turn on the radio or a new upbeat song comes on...she'll say it almost like a question and then move her shoulders side-to-side very un-rhythmically)
  

Words or phrases that Julie signs on a regular basis:

• Doggy (patting her leg) (anytime she sees or hears one)
• Kitty (a finger scratching her jawbone, like whiskers) (anytime she sees one)
• Fishie (moving her hand erratically like a swimming fish) (in reference to our fish in a tank or to goldfish crackers)
• All done/all gone (twisting open hands)
• More (touching fingertips from each hand together)
• Water (a W with fingers to the chin -- hers is rudimentary)
• Milk (squeezing a hand together as though milking a cow) (I saw her do this last weekend for the first time since I stopped breast-feeding her)
• Eat/food (touching fingertips to her mouth) (first thing when she wakes up in the morning and when she gets up from her nap)
• Daddy (touches base of hand to side of head)
  

Other gestures/sounds, though not necessarily actual signs or words:

• Elephant (raises one arm and makes a buzzing sound)
• Duckie (opens and closes hand like "quack quack," but hand faces up instead of out)
• Bee (presses fingers and thumb together and moves hand around erratically while buzzing)
• Lion (wah!)
• Monkey (touches hand to side of head and says "oh, oh")

I'm working on getting all the animals on video. She loves them, and it's so fun(ny) to watch her do them.

A new game

Julie is starting to come up with peek-a-boo variations, and it's so much fun. Two days ago, she climbed onto the couch, picked up a pillow, pressed it to her face, and waited for me to say "where's Julie?" After I posed the question, she pulled the pillow away, grinning and playful. Here's some video footage of her other new take on peek-a-boo.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Julie's funny faces

I absolutely love these photos. Julie makes this face if you ask her "Are you a funny girl?" or "Are you silly?" or if you ask her to show you her funny (or silly) face. She won't do it if she thinks people are watching (i.e., she's performing), but she was in a really good mood this day, and I managed to snap several shots with perfect timing.

Random pictures

With a broken camera, my picture taking is sparse these days. I have Ben's old camera (thank goodness we kept it) that is not very high quality (you can buy it brand new on Amazon for $79) that I'm using for now. I'm not familiar with it, and it can't do nearly as great output as my broken one, but such is life. I thought I'd share two cute photos I got of Julie in the last week, though.

This one is blurred, but it's still pretty cute, if you ask me.


When we went to Maine last Christmas, we came home with two cases of the best root beer in the world. It's actually brewed by the same company that makes locally brewed beer, so it's fermented instead of carbonated. The flavor is great, and it doesn't have strong Wintergreen undertones. Julie is a big these days of pulling anything and everything out of the recycle bin, so she's been found walking around the house with empty (root) beer bottles. As she's still learning to walk (she's been on her own for about 3 weeks, but that doesn't make her a total pro -- she still stumbles a little occasionally), it's pretty funny to watch her walking around with the bottle, looking a little tipsy.

She looked so cute in this little outfit the other day (and leaving her rubber bands in her hair!) that I had to take some pictures.

Water drinking

Julie seems to want to be a big girl. Or at least, she wants to do what the big kids are doing. Every opportunity she had, she would try to drink out of our glasses. It usually had pretty silly and entertaining results.

Here she is with Gramps...


And with Grammy...
And here's a video for you enjoyment. If you watch closely, you can see the water pouring out off of her chin.

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Catch-up: A narrative

It's been a really long time since I've blogged, I know. I went to Connecticut for two weeks, and I've been playing catch-up ever since. Ben was gone at the same time (just Julie and I went to CT) on a Boy Scout trip. He went on a week-long canoe trip on the French River and Georgian Bay in Canada, and absolutely loved it.

Since my last posts, Julie has:

• Taken her first steps. Her record is eight consecutive steps. She;'s done it a few times, but she won't do it when we try to coax her. It's completely on her terms. She doesn't yet seem to understand that walking is a form of transportation, and she genuinely doesn't realize that she really doesn't need to hold onto something, that she can do it on her own.
• Started wearing ponytails. She does okay with the rubber bans. I just started these this week. If I put a bow in her hair, she pulls it out post haste.
• Learned how to play "splish splash." My mom bought a little kiddie pool for Julie while we were there. It took a few days to warm up to the idea, but after that she loved it.
• Learned to identify her head, ears, mouth, nose, and belly button.
• Started to blow kisses. Results on this are still a little spotty, because it's a new thing.
• Been standing on her own for long stretches of time, playing with toys.
• Learned how to say "all done" -- it comes out more like "ah-dah!"
• Learned to ask where someone is. At my parents' house, whenever someone would go outside or out to the garage, or upstairs, Julie would turn her hands upward, get a quizzical look on her face, and say "Wuh zuh zuh?" or "Where'd s/he go?"
  
• Fed herself with a spoon. Once or twice.
• Started dancing along with her singing.
• Gotten tall. It seems like nothing is out of reach anymore.
• Figured out how to get on the coffee table and the couch, and has tried to climb into her high chair.
  

Funny girl

Julie is really developing quite a personality. She makes some really funny faces at times, and I've been lucky enough to capture some of them on film. Here is a small collection of photos that make me laugh out loud, or at least smile wider than other photos.

Yes, she climbed into that drawer on her own. She couldn't figure out how to get back out again, so she was crying for help. I saw her in there, and of course ran for the camera before helping her. She wasn't pleased that I left her there without helping her first, but when she saw the camera, she smiled for it, even though she was in between cries.
These two are just really cute.


Sometimes her eyes are half-closed in pictures, making her look a little drugged. She's not. I promise.

The next three are eating pictures. The first one is my favorite.



I was trying to get a good picture of her funny hair (which is standing on end after we wiped chili out of it), but I don't know what she's doing with her face.

She was only barely willing to leave my glasses on long enough for me to snap a picture, but she wasn't terribly thrilled with the idea.

And here's a video of her looking funny. Grammy would be proud.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com