the last month has been a trying time for our family but hana has been a constant ray of sunshine. i was just looking at pictures of her at christmas time and it's amazing to me how much she has changed. she is so much like a little girl now. her hair has even grown in quite a bit, adding hair dressing, and hair accessories as a new step to the morning routine.
in the last month she started at a new daycare which she seems to really enjoy. while it has been an adjustment (mostly for her father) to have her in a setting with children of different ages she seems to have really benefited from the exposure to language and their advanced skills. at her last daycare, she was in a classroom full of one-year olds. now, she's the youngest, and the next oldest kid is 21 months. there are a couple of more 2 year olds, and a few three and four year olds. being around the older kids has enhanced her development from my point of view. for example, for a couple of months now, she has had the skills to feed herself with a spoon, but no real inclination to do so. now, i know that around 15 months is the time when it is reasonable to expect a child start being interested in it, but seeing the older kids feeding themselves seems to have really pushed up that timeline for her.
her developing language skills and sense of humor have also been fun. she is signing, and/or saying so many words now. not all of the words are understandable to the untrained ear, but the latest and greatest are: saying "me" and "mine", signing "help", saying "up" and "down". all of our zoo trips are paying off too. she signs and makes the sound for elephant (a lot, actually), monkey (that ones pretty cute to see), giraffe and will roar when she sees a lion or tiger. most furry creatures she will "meow" at and believes they are some form of cat, although in the past week or two, she will bark to communicate with a dog. she also seems to be into counting lately. it's all just mimicking sounds, i think, but she does say "two" and "three". several weeks ago, in some of her books with counting in them, i started to point her finger and count the objects. she's been mimicking the sing song way that i count: "oooone, twooo, threee..." except when she does it, she usually says "twooo, twoooo, threeeee, ooouuunnhhh, ooouuunh". sometimes, she will grab my hand and point the finger to count in her way. yes, this
is as cute as it sounds. i have also heard her singing the alphabet song, just not using any letters that you and i would understand. (my guess is that the counting and the alphabet song seems to be a direct result of being around older kids).
hana is learning to use the word "no". she is not yet into the full blown defiant "NO!" but we know that day is coming very soon. but she has a couple of books that follow the pattern of asking a question and then answering it beginning with "no,..." for example, in "Push n' Pop Things People Do" it asks "Who's baking the bread? Is it the teacher? No, little Lucy. It's the baker." she loves this book and sometimes recites it to herself in the car and just wandering around the house. she'll say "da da da, Nooooo, da da". it's pretty funny actually.
she continues to really respond to music. we do find her singing and dancing a lot more these days. when singing to herself the "ashes, ashes, we all fall down" from ring around the rosey, it comes out as "ah che, ah che, de de DOWN!" we try to limit her tv exposure but we keep episodes of "sesame street" and the "backyardigans" on standby in the dvr to keep her entertained when we're getting ready in the morning or cooking dinner or something like that. she seems to really like the singing and dancing they do on the backyardigans (i must admit, i'm a fan as well).
she is a full blown toddler now, complete with wet noodle tantrums (although they are relatively short at this point) at being told no and flagrant defiance until redirected. she also does things that she knows annoys mommy and daddy, such as turn the tv on and off again. she has also taken to throwing her food on the floor one morsel at a time. sometimes she does this when she is full, or not very hungry. sometimes she does this because she wants more of one dish of the meal and we have encouraged her to eat some of the other things on her tray. sometimes she's doing it just to get the reaction, but isn't necessarily done eating, and when we take her tray away (the usual consequence for this infraction) she gets all upset and starts saying "mee me meeee" - as if to say, "hey that's mine, give it back!". sometimes she does things that are funny but jon and i know that to laugh at them would be to encourage a bad habit. this leads to us averting our eyes and covering our faces to disguise our laughter, which, of course, she thinks is a new game of peek-a-boo.
and speaking of unsavory social behavior, she has also entered her climbing phase (at least we hope it's just a phase). she likes to stand in her chair and on the back of her little scooter (with wheels on it mind you) and any thing else that will give her some extra height (as if she needs it). this makes her father especially crazy. we also find ourselves redirecting her a lot from hitting, pushing and all out "take downs" with other children. in fact, on her first day of the new daycare, they described hana as a "perfect angel". when we picked her up from her second day, they joked that "the real hana had shown up today". apparently, she had her little buddy ricky (a 2 year old, with whom she is really tight, and whom they refer to as her "partner in crime") pinned on the floor professional wrestling style. ms. leona, her new daycare provider, says those two are inseparable and she likes that hana holds her own, even though she's the youngest (though not the shortest) kid there. so she encourages her spunkiness, within reason of course. fortunately, i have heard about other one year olds that have become little bullies so i don't get too self-conscious about this behavior, but because she's so much bigger than other kids her age, my goal is to evolve her into more of a gentle giant and maybe even protector of the size challenged, as opposed to just a big 'ol meanie. only time will tell if she has similar goals.
