Development

As we approach her 2nd birthday (less than a month away - how the heck did that happen?), Blair is developing at lightening speed. Her verbal skills are amazingly improved...we can actually communicate with her 90% of the time now whereas we used to only understand about 50% of what she said. And she's saying so many new words...most of them very clearly. She's stringing many words together - we're not quite up to complete sentences, but 2-4 words is getting really close. We're really having to mind our words, because she's repeating everything she hears these days. She really only has one "special" word left, and that is agla. I've never heard her utter the word water - it has always been agla. Even if we ask her specifically if she wants water, she'll reply back with an enthusiastic "Agla!" The words we hear her say most often are "cookies," "milk," "babies" and, of course, "Dora."

She's still really into Dora the Explorer. On a whim I bought her a copy of Finding Nemo a few weeks ago. She LOVES Nemo. Loves him, I say. He's not quite up to Dora's rankings, but he's not far behind. While we were at the coast a couple of weeks ago, she enjoyed watching a few of her cousin Olivia's movies...namely Cars and Monsters, Inc. She likes Sesame Street characters, but not necessarily watching the show. She'll still ask for Elmo occasionally, but not often.

She still loves her babies. She feeds them - sometimes even sharing out of her own sippy cup while making little "sucking" noises for them. And she also likes to put them down for naps. This usually consists of laying them face-down and covering them up with a dishtowel, wet-wipe or anything else resembling a blanket. I have to be careful with hand towels...if I give her one to dry her hands on, she dries them quickly then takes off running chanting "babies? babies!" meaning that they're about to be put down for a nap. She also really likes her little kitchen which came from her cousin Barbara Deane. She'll make cookies and spaghetti mostly. And she uses her oven mitts to do most things in the kitchen, which is soo cute. I'm impressed with her pretending skills - I think she's going to have a really great imagination!

I think we may have conquered her fear of bears. Olivia had her birthday party at the Build-A-Bear workshop, so she got completely immersed in all things bears. Since then, she's been OK with them. She doesn't seek them out, and she still occasionally says "Bears? Yay Dada!" referring to the wooden bears my Dad made that were in her bedroom until she developed the bear-phobia...then Daddy promptly got rid of said bears.

And she still loves dogs, especially Daisy. I wish I could say that Daisy was warming up to Blair, but I'm afraid that may never happen. Daisy has learned, however, that Blair is very useful as a snack-dispenser. So she tolerates her for the food if nothing else.

Oh, and she has great manners. She's very good at saying "Thank You." We're working on please, your welcome and sirs and mams. She can throw a tantrum like nobody's business. We're feeling our way through these. If we're at home, we try to walk away and not acknowledge it. In public, we (or maybe I should speak for myself here and say I) tend to panic and do whatever we can to get her to stop. Yep...gotta figure this one out, and fast! Potty training hasn't been a priority, but she's really starting to show signs of readiness so that is our next hurdle. My plan is to try my friend Kim's "3 days and $75" plan...barricade ourselves in the house for three whole days with no diapers and go hard-core with the potty, then spend $75 to have the carpet cleaned once we're done. She swears it works...we shall see. I just have to figure out when I can dedicate three days with no work, errands or other plans...

She is truly a delight and I thank God each and every day for bringing her into our lives.