M is still recovering from her cold. She's still congested, but doing better. Her spirits are back to normal which is a good sign. DH is practically recovered from his cold. I'm still congested, but feeling much better than last week. I'm still keeping Kleenex in business....
M is becoming quite the chatterbox, and tries very hard to repeat what we say. She's picked up quite a lot lately. She will dig through my purse for the car keys and say "ka kee", then run around the house trying to fit the key into the keyholes under the doorknobs (we have those old style doors with the bogus keyhole holes in them).
While I was pregnant, I had some preconceived notions about what my child would not do. I remember going to the lab to get some blood drawn (oh gosh, that's all they did while I was pregnant, poke, poke, poke) and seeing a toddler, in the waiting room, who was going through his mom's wallet. I thought to myself that I would never let my child do that. Ha! M goes through my purse and pulls out stuff all the time. There are times when I can't find the keys when we are about to go out. They could be anywhere in the house. Sometimes she puts them back in the diaper bag, but in the wrong compartment, so it takes me a while to find them.
It's really cute when you ask M to find something. "Where is Ojo?" She'll say, "mmmm," as she thinks about it before she goes about trying to find the Ojo (or whatever object you asked her to find). She says, "aaahhh," when she finds the object.
M has recently decided that her favorite word to say is "no", which is definitely not my favorite word for her to use! I'll ask her if she wants some spaghetti. She'll answer, "noooo!" I'll ask her if she wants to go out. She'll respond with, "noooo!" It's very frustrating.
It's still quite challenging to take photos of M. Once she sees the camera, she will immediately stop what she is doing to walk towards me (as you can see in the photo above) and try to reach for the camera. And that girl just can't be still enough to take clear focused shots.
As you can see, I've been fiddling around with Microsoft Photo Editor. I used the smudge tool in the first picture above, I think it draws the focus on M. She looks pretty good in that photo, one of those rare shots of her sitting still. She's wearing the Swirl Hat I made for the Cap Karma Project. This is what happens to my knitting. M gets a hold of it, then it disappears, then it gets rediscovered at a later date. I've already "lost" the dark green Embossed Turtle Cloth, I'm sure it will turn up someday. At least some things are consistent. When the tea tin full of crayons is empty, I can always find where she put them... they're always behind a specific box in the dining room. I have no idea what compels her to drop the crayons behind this box, but she does it all the time.
I used the sandstone texture tool in the high chair photo. I was thinking about reinstalling Photoshop on my laptop. I hadn't yet gotten around to reinstalling it when I switched from the Compaq laptop to the Sony laptop. Do I really need that time sink? I can spend hours fiddling around with Photoshop and have nothing to show afterwards. It's very frustrating.
Getting M into the high chair is quite a challenge for me. I can probably get her in the chair 1 out of every dozen tries. It is almost the same with the car seat and stroller. DH OTOH usually has no trouble at all.
M can sign more words now, including hot and cold. I need to learn more words.
She's pretty good at saying "go go" (goo goo, for auntie in Mandarin), "poh poh" (grandma in Cantonese), "nai nai" (grandma in Mandarin), "yeh yeh" (grandpa in Mandarin), "mama", and "dah doon" (daddy). She even says "gag-m" (grandma) and "annie" (auntie). She can sign aunt, mommy, daddy, and grandma. We're currently working on saying "goo poh" (great aunt in Mandarin). This will be a pleasant surprise for her Great Aunt Katie.
She's quite the picky eater lately. She vetoes most of what I offer her. I think she's entering a texture phase. She had tortilla chips for the first time a couple days ago and loved them. She asks for pizza rolls ("pee roll"). She still likes cereal. She never refuses fries. She is rejecting noodles more frequently now. I think she's just into more crunchy foods, and moving away from the mushy noodles.
M is starting to become more bossy and barking orders. She'll say "cheh" (chair) and "sit" to tell us to sit in the chair. She has even said, "cheh, floor," to me while pointing at the spot on the floor where she wants me to sit. She can say, "come," to indicate that she wants you to follow her.
DH & I normally dislike reality shows on TV, however we do indulge in American Idol each year. It's mindless fun, when you don't want to watch something as intense as 24. I recently discovered an AI blog, which is a hoot to read. http://idolingalong.blogspot.com/ We don't actually watch AI live. We let Tivo record it, and then we chip away at it in the days following. So this means we won't have an opportunity to vote. Our poor Tivo is almost running out of space with all the crap we record and the limited time we have to catch up with the shows (24, American Idol, Battlestar Galactica, Bones, CSI, Las Vegas, Naruto, NCIS, Scrubs) we have recorded. Then there's the oddball stuff I record which DH doesn't watch with me (such as Cadfael, Masterpiece Theatre, Mystery!, Rosemary & Thyme).
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