Month 24, January 2007

Lily's speech improved a lot this month. She copies new words quickly and pronounces them better. I was doing laundry with Lily and needed Michelle for something, so I yelled, "Honey, I need you! Can you come help?" Minutes later, and for days afterward, Lily kept saying, "Daddy, I need you! I need help!" However, she doesn't seem willing to change words she's used a long time. She can say "bottle", but still calls it "ba-ba", and she can pronounce "water", but still calls it "wa-wa". She's also learning some nice manners, saying "please", "thank you", "excuse me", "I'm sorry", and occasionally "you're welcome" or "bless you" (if I sneeze).

One of her stranger words is "conon" (rhymes with "phonon", or "phone on"; close to "Conan" the Barbarian.) Conon means "penguin". She's been able to say something closer to penguin before, but now she seems like she's correcting me if I say "penguin". (Like when I say "Madeline" and she insists the right name is "Nangy".) She has a lot of stuffed penguins, and is particularly attached to one she calls her Baby Conon. I'm happy about this, because it's the Linux penguin!

Last month it was sweet when she started saying "I love you", but now she says it all the time. When she sees people or animals hugging, she says "I love you!" When she's playing with stuffed animals, she has them say "I love you" to each other. The funniest one was when she was in the study with me playing on "her" computer, and she hugged the big monitor and said, "I love you TV!"


After struggling (and failing) to get 18-month-old portraits taken of Lily (because she cried the whole time), we were relieved to get 2-year-old portraits successfully.


We also got family portraits. We let her hold her Conon to keep her calm.


Here's Lily driving her Conon friends around. There's a bigger one not in the picture that she calls the Daddy (or sometimes Mommy). The big one shown here is just Conon or "Baby Conon"; the next one is "Bird"; and the two smallest ones are "twins". "Bird" got his name after I was making the penguins act out the song "Papa's Going To Buy You A Mockingbird". I made him fly around, and ever after that he was "Bird". (Or maybe Bird is a "she"; Lily sometimes says "good girl" to several of them. I asked her once which ones were boys or girls, and she said all but the Daddy are girls.)



This is Lily doing a rare fashion show! Usually I have a hard time getting her to hold still so I can take a picture of her outfit. This time, Michelle was standing behind me, coaching Lily to pose in all these funny positions!


We bought some crayons you can use in the bathtub. Michelle and Lily wrote "Mom" and "Lily" on their foreheads, presumably to help me remember their names.


Cailey's birthday party was the week before Lily's. Cailey is slightly closer in age to Lily than Madeline is, so they usually get moved to new day care rooms together, and Madeline joins them later.


Michelle got Lily interested in puzzles at Cailey's party. Abby and Cailey came over to do puzzles too.


Grandma and Grandpa sent DVDs (Lily likes watching movies now), a cute purple purse, an Elmo placemat, and cookies for Lily's birthday. We got her roller skates, which she didn't want to play with (oh well), and a kid's digital camera that she also wasn't that interested in. (Lola and Papa sent Lily a big check so she can pick out her own toys, but we haven't taken her shopping yet.)


We scored a lot better with an Elmo toolbelt, which she can use with her Elmo workbench. Both workbench and toolbelt were Michelle's idea; neither of them strike me as something fun to play with! (But then, I can't hang up a towel rack successfully.) Lily likes playing with both of them. Good, maybe she'll learn to fix things around the house for us!


She also liked a big box of plastic animals we got her. In the second picture you can tell she's holding the lion and saying "Roar!"


My parents sent a pad of Post-It notes with Lily's presents. We assumed this was some weird mistake, but after Lily got a hold of them, I realized my parents know kids better than we do. She loved the Post-It notes more than the movies, purse, and cookies! In the third and fourth pictures, she took the cookies out of their tin container and used it to store her valuable Post-It notes, plus the coins that were in her purse.


Lily's birthday party was Saturday, Feb. 3rd (her birthday is Feb. 2nd). We had a smaller party this year to make the preparation easier on us. The kids had fun playing in Lily's playroom. Here you see Madeline, Cailey, Cameron, and Colin.


Sean, Caroline, Reed, and Madison also found fun things to play with.


Here's Lily's penguin-themed birthday cake. She got excited when everyone started singing Happy Birthday to her.


Lily has never liked cake much, and rarely eats any. I offered her cake, and she said no, but then saw that all the other kids got to sit at the table and eat their cake, so then she wanted some. Peer pressure! People always badmouth peer pressure, but Lily behaves a lot better when other day care kids are with her.


After eating cake and opening presents, we let the kids paint animal figurines at the table. Michelle had the smart idea to buy white T-shirts for all the kids to wear. Colin was especially interested in painting.


This is a movie of everyone singing Happy Birthday.


Amidst all her partying, Lily still had a little time to spend with her parents.


Late in the party the kids got Lily's various cars and bikes out and drove around the house.


Here's a picture of Lily, Cailey, and Madeline when all of them are approximately 2 years old.


While we were home after the party, Lily was relaxing and started singing Happy Birthday to herself. She stood up on my chest while singing. I don't understand why she has to stand on my chest, but she often says to me, "Lily sing!", and then stands on my chest and starts singing. At least it's a good workout for my stomach muscles! This is an MPEG movie (click the picture or download from here; a longer version in Quicktime format is here.


It snowed here on Lily's birthday (and melted away by the end of the day). Lily touched some and tried throwing it like a snowball. (She had seen some snow a year ago when we went to Ohio for Christmas, but may not have remembered it.)


Cousin Becca in Ohio sees snow more than we do (thank goodness).

Lily's tongue turned blue from eating some candy, and she thought it was funny looking at her tongue in the mirror. (When she's brushing her teeth, she often waves and says, "Hi mirror!")


We got a computer game for Lily, where something happens no matter what computer key you press.


She put Michelle's coat and shoes on and tried walking in them. It didn't work out!


Lily's looking for a new hair style in this magazine.


Lily got some new books for Christmas from Beth and Brian Reynolds, and here she is reading them to her assembled stuffed friends. She often yells at her stuffed animals to "Come here!", and seems genuinely irritated that they don't stand up by themselves and walk over to her.

On January 30th, quite out of the blue, Lily said she had to go potty. So I sat her down on it, and she went! She did this two more times that day, and one of those times she pooped! (It seems weird to be excited about poop, I know!)