Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Proud mommy-bragging :)

Basbusa turned 18 months last week, and it's incredible how fast she is picking up new things these days. Her sweet little hands no longer look like soft little starfish, but suddenly have become much older-looking, and every day she gets better at squeezing, twisting, poking, and picking-up.

She's "reading" books independently more and more frequently, and seems to find plenty to look at and point out to herself even without me sitting by to participate and admire.

She has become so accomplished in the matter of pouring and spooning! When we started about two months ago with activities like rice-pouring and lots of water-pouring in the bath, the mess was generally so plentiful and widespread that I never dreamed that she'd have mastered it so soon, especially since we've only concentrated on it specificially a handful of times, and all the rest of her practice has just been real-life experiences. I can hand her a regular cup of milk or juice, and know that she won't spill it unless she gets distracted, and knocks it with a foot while reaching for something else with her hand. She adores helping me make porridge in the mornings, and transfers oatmeal from the giant container into the saucepan with a cup-measure, with only a spoonful or so ending up on the floor. And in the bath, she's a pro, pouring from cup to container to squirty-frog and back again. She's even trying to wash her own hair!

She's such a caring little mama to her dolls and animals. Her Baba let her pick out one of those super-cheap-and-tacky baby-doll sets at Walmart, with a little six-inch plastic dolly and a host of accessories like a potty, a ride-on-duck, some bottles, a bowl with a spoon and fork, etc. Basbusa spends fifteen minutes at a time feeding the baby, sitting it on its duck, putting it to sleep, and wrapping it up in its blanket.

She's doing so well with the potty training! When we go out, I now leave her in undies (rather than a diaper) more often than not, unless I know it will be a very long trip with no access to a bathroom. But we haven't had an accident outside the home yet, and she's doing just fine peeing in restaurant and store bathrooms. At home she almost always uses the potty rather than peeing on the floor. The only two things to watch out for are when she's watching YouTube with Baba - an activity she finds so enthralling that it crowds out everything else - and when she has had massive amounts of juice to drink :)

My sweet little munchkin is getting so good at please and thank-you (well, "so good" in the sense that she said her first un-prompted "please" yesterday, and is happy to repeat "thank-you" when reminded). And as she starts to get the hang of putting sentences together, she's coming up with such heart-melting little statements. Like today at breakfast: "Mama. Kiss. Basbusa kiss mama. Mwah!!"

She's a huge fan of mobile phones, and is starting to recognize numbers as a result. She loves picking out a number on the keypad and seeing it come up on the screen when she presses it. Her favourite by far is the number zero, and she also knows six pretty well (although she sometimes muddles it with nine). Yesterday, I thought I'd introduce a new one, so I started by asking her if she could find a three. I was expecting to have to show it to her, but she went right to it and pressed it!

And also yesterday, she was drawing on a pad of paper, and, as usual, passing me the pen every so often to draw something for her while she watched. So, on one of my turns - having drawn enough cats to last me a lifetime - I drew a letter س , and asked her what it was. She immediately replied, "sssssssssssssssss!". Well, hey! Great! So what about this one? و . "oooooooooooooooooooooo!", she replied. I was almost afraid to push my luck, but tried one more. How about this one, Basbusa? ب "b! b!", she said. Then she took the pen back and started trying to draw ب's of her own :) Awwwwwwwwww, sweet adorable darling little angel-cupcake.

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