Growing a Little Schulze: 2 years, part 2

June to September 2013

Sweet girl

June 16th - First ponytail!!

Here's what Claire was up to for the middle portion of her second year:

Again, the language development continues to astound and fascinate me. It is amazing to think of the difference 6 months make. At her 2 year appointment I was saying she had two and maybe 3 word sentences. Now we're up to...well, probably paragraphs! I've heard at least 8 word sentences.

In mostly chronological order, here are some of her phrases and sentences, starting in June

Pretty cool
Amazing

Sku me (excuse me) (turned into a clear excuse me before September)

Captains chair, alligator chair - chomp, chomp (Jeff tried to teach her that driver=captain, passenger=navigator. Navigator became alligator)

Stop it, please

Hair balloon (when we were in Myrtle beach she wanted a balloon hat, but she called it a hair balloon)

Mama wanna come? Mama wanna chair? (High voice, said quickly)

Supercereo (yelled as she is running through the kitchen pretending to be a superhero)

Mmm, tasty!
Deee-licious!

Twinkle twinkle...hangle, hangle, hangle (Twinkle little star developed some new words! This phase lasted for months!)

French coke (My mom and I wanted to get a frozen coke. Claire called in a French coke~)

Wazzat? Whatcha doing mama? (Oh my, I heard these phrases 100's of times a day!)

Horse=ho worse

Look at my got (Look at what I've got)

Ahhhh, no

Restamont = restaurant

Scoast = ghost

I can use my toes to walk (I want to walk barefoot)

I good. (I'm good)

Where's my angel? (angel = halo, the halo being made of a string pulled from a pom pom and draped over her head)

Lello poops (she always wants to see Ellie's yellow poop)

I not!

Where me to go? (I clarify: Where are we going?) No, where Claire to go?

What we doing here?

Mines / It's mines!

A friend makes Claire pancakes spelling her name. She eats them and wants more. She we give her half of a regular pancake. She asks what it is. I tell her it's a semi circle. Jeff says a "D". She corrects us both and says "No, it's a watermelon!"

Some other language things that have been going on:
Claire started really being able to sing along with songs. Twinkle, twinkle and itsy bitsy were favorites. Then she started singing phrases from songs on the radio. A few Taylor Swift songs were favorites. "Nevvuh, evvuh, back togedder!" or "Trubble, trubble I knew you trubble"

Because Claire can repeat longer phrases of words, Jeff amused himself by giving her long or funny things to repeat. Medical terms or super cali fragilistic expialidocious. One day early on in this period, he asked to say "Uh uh, girlfriend!" And she did with just the right tone of voice. And we cracked up!

She has started doing some significant vowel + r distortion. So work is pronounced as woik or burp is boip.

She's also been trying out phrases she has heard but using them incorrectly. Mostly she tries to use them to protest or express displeasure. For example, "Too late!" I'm thinking she heard us use this when she couldn't decide if she wanted something, took too long to decide, and missed the opportunity so we said "sorry, too late." So now if we ask her to do something she doesn't want to, sometimes she gets mad and says "Too late!" in this mad, teary voice.

A lot of things also became dangerous around here. I tell her it's almost time for bed. She tells me "That's dangerous!" Ellie puts her foot in poop as I'm changing her diaper. Claire says "That's dangerous!"

She entered a phase of making up a lot of words and playing with sounds and language in general. In June it started with songs. As I mentioned above, Twinkle little star became Twinkle, twinkle, hangle, hangle. Or "twinkle, twinkle little star, hangle hangle, hangle" I have no idea what hangle is or where it came from. Then she started adding her own lyrics to songs. Instead of climbing a waterspout, the itsy bitsy spider walked in the road, and did something I couldn't decipher to the wall

In August/September she really went crazy with making up words. One afternoon she told me "It's lombat time!"

One morning we had this conversation:

C: Hi momma, how you?
Me: Good, how are you?

C: Whatcha doing?

Me: I'm feeding Ellie

C: Are you ca-gock-ulling?

Me: Sure. Are you ca-gock-ulling?

C: No. I simsanning!

And one day on the way home from school she wanted a snack. I asked her if she wanted a cheese stick when we got home. She says "That would be simmi!" Given her tone of voice, I assume "simmi" is a positive word.

Other areas of development:
Sleep - A few months before Ellie came, Claire decided to try to give up her nap. We were still putting her down for her nap, she was just not sleeping. One day she got into lotion and creams. Multiple times she has pooped and either taken her diaper off or it leaked out. Cleaning poop off a nightstand (because she sat on it) is not something I expected to do. The drawers are out of said nightstand because she was opening them and using them to climb into bed. Or put her feet in while sitting on the nightstand. She routinely takes all the books off her shelves. And if she did nap, it took her forever to fall asleep! So when Amazon had a one day sale on a video monitor we grabbed one. Not for the new baby, but the mischievous toddler! Just after Ellie arrived, Claire seemed to settle into a pattern of sleeping a few times a week. And now when she doesn't sleep, she quietly looks at books, sings, and talks to herself.

Lotion and hydrocortisone all over!

Eating - She has begun to display the typical toddler reluctance to try new stuff. She also isn't liking things that are mixed together like casseroles and soups. Even if it things she likes, she prefers each item separate. We've used a little tune from one of her favorite shows that says "you have to try new things because they might taste good." And sometimes it works!!

TV - Claire's favorite shows are Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. But she has seen many others since my parents have more channels than we do and let her watch more than we do. :) So she likes most Nick Jr and Disney Jr shows. She also enjoys a good Curious George or Clifford from PBS as well. Her interest in TV and her ability to sustain attention continue to grow. She loves TV these days and asks for it whenever we are sitting at home with nothing going on. I usually let her watch some in the mornings and sometimes in the afternoon depending on poorly things are going.

Play - Her pretend play has grown rapidly. She will pretend to cook things for us or for her dolls and animals. My favorite was when she set her animals up at the table and started making things to feed them. She also acts our caretaker activities like wrapping and kissing booboos and changing dirty diapers. On our road trip to Myrtle Beach she was using napkins as blankets and band-aids.

She is also coloring more and more. She likes coloring for very short periods. She loves play-doh but wants adult participation. She loves these color with water books I found. The pen is filled with water and the water magically makes the colors on the cardboard pages appear. She loves being outside and likes to "do chalk" and play with bubbles.

Attitude - We are working through a "no" phase. As in, she says no to everything we ask, offer, or suggest. "It's not" is also heard often. On 9/13, she hit Grammi while we were having dinner out (a VERY unusual occurrence thankfully). I told her say sorry. She says "No! I NOT sorry!" with her pursed little lips and crossed arms. We all had to try not to laugh.

Lying? - She's beginning to tell little fibs of sorts. For example, she has a poopy diaper and my mom asks her who smells. Claire claims it's the dog. On another occasion, it was Ellie, who was out of state at the time. My parents took the girls up to a relative's cabin a few hours before I headed up.

When they were going to put her Claire down for a nap, she tells them "there's no napping at the cabinet." And they all just went along with it!

Speaking of the cabin.....First she called it the cabinet, which was hilarious. Then she began to call our family friend Walt, Uncle Wallet.

Academic type stuff -
Counting

9/10/13 - 4 finally gets added in! We no longer skip from 3 to 6 or 7!

She can count objects to 3 or 4

She got shapes, the alphabet song, and colors down pat. She's developing some letter recognition. We've worked on C since that is in her name. She already had W down for some reason. She does pretty well with K (for her 2 cousins Kiersten and Kerrington) and a few others like M, S, X, and Y. We are working on E for Ellie.

Pictures: