19 months old!

This week we had a fun week of celebrating Valentine's Day in all of our classes. We had a few parties, exchanged Valentines, did Valentine artwork, and decorated cookies. Chloe continues to go on her potty this week and she gets excited when she is successful! Her new phrase of the week is "Where did my _____ go?" when she is looking for something like her friends, her shoes, her baby doll, or her daddy and she can't find them. She loves to help me around the house, she stands on a stool while I wash dishes or cook to see what is going on.

18 months and 3 weeks

This week we had my friend Kari into town with Ryder (10 months old) and Zane (2.5 years) and her exchange student Aimee from South Africa. We went to a Superbowl party on Sunday and then went to Disneyland for the first time on Monday! It was a long day with 3 kids, but so much fun! Chloe and Zane really enjoyed the rides.

Chloe is making progress using the potty. She told me this week, "Mommy, pee pee potty" and then ran in the bathroom and sat on her potty and made it! I was very proud of her and she seemed pleased with herself. The next day she almost made it to the potty 2 times, but didn't get her underwear down in time. But today she was successful again:) Hopefully she will continue to make progress!

18 months and 2 weeks

This week Chloe has been really enjoying doing art projects, coloring with markers or crayons, playdough, stickers, painting with colored ice, so we try to do one short activity a day. I signed her up for an art class that starts in a few weeks, so I hope she likes it. Here is Chloe decorating her Valentine cards that we made for her class. She painted hearts, put stickers, and glitter on them. She loves glitter so much...she gets herself covered in it! Here is another one of her playing with my shoes.

18 months and 1 week ( January 23, 2009)

We are busy with classes....we are doing Mommy and Me 3 days a week, music class, and a swim class on the weekends again. But one of our Mommy and Me classes is officially being canceled (it meets Mon/Wed and it was free) since our classroom is being turned into an expensive daycare, so instead we are going to plan playdates with our friends from class and try to do a different activity each time.

We have been enjoying the beautiful weather here and Matt and I are jogging at night with Chloe to try to keep up our New Year's Resolution. We are also doing a lot spring cleaning to get ready for our busy month of visitors in February (my friend Kari, Matt's friend, and my family).

Chloe loves her new tricycle. We push her to the park on it, but she still can't really pedal by herself yet.

18 months old (Friday, January 16, 2009)

Chloe turned 18 months old on the 13th and it is unbelievable to me how she is her own little person and not a baby anymore! Her personality shines through as an intelligent, confident, comical, polite, strong willed little girl. I have lost count of how many words she uses on a daily basis, but her vocabulary is pretty advanced for her age. She still is speaking in phrases such as "I want snack" and "there you go", "how cute", and "come on Daddy"(when she is ready for bed and wants Daddy to come up stairs with her). She recognizes so many objects and says the names for things when she sees them in books, flash cards, around the house, and outside.

For awhile now she tells me when she has gone "pee pee", "poopy", or "pee yeww", so we have started using her potty more now during the day, but with no pressure. She loves her new pink potty! I think she is ready, but it takes a lot of patience and time to train a toddler. I have let her try on big girl underwear and she does really well. She has yet to go to the bathroom on the potty (with the exception of when I tried at 10 months old and she went on the potty for 2 weeks!), but we are working on getting her to sit still for longer periods of time and reading her books on the potty.

We recently switched insurance, so we just switched Chloe's doctor and I am very happy with our new doctor. She weighs 25 lbs (75th percentile) and 32 inches (50th percentile). We are back to the normal routine of classes this week.

17 months and 4 weeks

We are finally back home in San Diego! It was so nice to visit with everyone in NY, but nice to be home again. Chloe did very well on the flight home, she played with her sticker book, read stories, ate snacks, watched a video, and then it was time to switch planes. We had a quick layover and she had time to run through the Atlanta airport and then we were right back on the next plane. Since we were traveling after the holidays, we were lucky to have an empty seat next to us each time! The flight to San Diego left around her bed time, so she slept for about 4.5 hours and then we were home!Chloe adjusted back to the time change the following day.

This weekend the weather out here is beautiful...a nice sunny 72 degrees! So we went for a 6 mile hike on Saturday to Iron Mountain (here are a few pictures at the top) and then went for a nice jog and bike ride at Mission Bay Park. Chloe received her new tricycle from Nana and Papa when we got home and she loves it! We are back to classes and our normal routine next week.

17 months and 3 weeks (January 4, 2008)

Chloe and I ended up staying longer in Rochester. Chloe was sick with a cold and pretty miserable the day before we were supposed to leave, so I ended up extending our trip to the following week so she would have time to recover. I just thought it would be a miserable flight for everyone if she was crying on the plane the whole time. So it was nice to have some extra time to visit with everyone.

I tried to get Chloe out of the house every day to run around since the weather was cold and snowy. There was great community center near my parent's where Chloe could run around in the gym and then do arts and crafts. We also took her to the Strong Museum 3 times while we were there. It is a wonderful hands on children's museum with so much to keep the kids busy. We also tried the Sandbox indoor playground, and Bounce It Out, an indoor place with many inflatable bouncers and slides.

Chloe loves to sing her ABC song (and she sings it pretty clearly too!) and she still likes to count. A few time I heard her count to 10! She is speaking more clearly and using short sentences to ask for things along with her sign language too. I am so surprised to see how much she learns every day!