Amelynne’s Adventure

Today we went to the playground. I went on a big slide. It was like a big tunnel except you could slide down it. I was a bit scared at first because I thought I would fall off – it was a bit high. A seven year old said you had to treat it exactly like a slide. I don’t know my friend’s names. There was a dog and I was a bit scared of it. It was black and it went near daddy – it was very well behaved and sat down.

half pipe in museumplein
It looked a little like this.

I went down on my back. I wasn’t scared any more when I had a go. I went even faster than I thought it would go. I played on the other playground. The other playground had a tunnel and two slides but they were different sizes. There was a rope that I couldn’t climb.

I went down the small slide with Evany on my lap. I went down with Merrick on my lap too.

I went to the shops and got a gingerbread man.

Amelynne’s 2nd Birthday Party!

On the weekend before Amelynne’s birthday we had all her available family over for a little birthday bash. Everybody had a good time, especially Amelynne.

We hung out in our rumpus room:

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We then played pass the parcel, and the prize was a bubble blowing kit (which Tasman won) so we all went outside and had lots of fun blowing bubbles:

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We then had the cake (a pig because Amelynne loves them):

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In the excitement Amelynne actually lost her balance and fell forward and squished her hand into the cake (hee hee) but there was no major damage and we proceeded with the singing…:

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What has Amelynne been up to?

The weekend before last she caught up with her family, including her little cousin Landon:

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Nobody else looked any good in this photo, but it is such a gorgeous one of Landon I couldn’t resist.

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The next weekend we took Amelynne to the Hahndorf Farm Barn (which was a bit disappointing) and she loved the guinea pigs, and was surprisingly brave :).

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She also helped to bottle feed a lamb:

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Lots of stuff about Amelynne

I basically gave up keeping up the website but keep getting worried that I’m going to forget all the wonderful things that Amelynne does, says and who she is right now as a gorgeous, energetic, enthusiastic toddler. So I’m just going to brainstorm and throw down everything that I can think of about my gorgeous daughter.

When Amelynne turned 19 months I counted 34 words that she was using consistently and in the right context. Straight after that I started to lose count because she was learning about 2 new words a day and her speech just exploded. At 2o months she used 7 words to tell a very accurate story about what happens when she goes to day care: “Vera, huggy, Daddy bye bye, car, Mummy no” In other words, she goes and gives her carer a hug, then Daddy says goodbye and leaves in the car, and Mummy stays home.

Yesterday, when she was just 21 months she told her first imagined story (well we had no idea what she was referring to): “man, hat, out there, car, big”. As she was sitting in the bath at the time so couldn’t even see outside and Josh and I hadn’t known anything about a man in a hat in a big car during the day, we think she made it up.

When we ask her to do something now she says “ok” and then does it about 70% of the time :).

Amelynne is very helpful, she loves helping to cook, especially stirring. She helps carry clean clothes to her room and puts them in drawers. She likes wiping down her own highchair tray. When she knocked over a glass of a bit of water I couldn’t be bothered doing anything about it, and she was very unhappy about that, so she went to her bedroom, grabbed a cloth off the shelf and came back and dabbed at the carpet. She has also tried to do the same but rather than getting a cloth, she grabbed an electricity bill from beside Josh and started cleaning up with that.

Things Amelynne loves:

  • Climbing – and she is very good at it, she is always getting “higher” and had mastered the highest points in our lounge room months ago. Her rocking horse is no longer just for rocking but also for acrobatics.
  • Going on her swing.
  • Riding her bike – she also stands up on that, and rides it down our little narrow steps.
  • Reading books
  • Singing and dancing – She can do the whole Hokey Pokey and some other Playschool songs and she loves ringa-ringa-rosey. When we aren’t up for joining in, she sings “ringa ringa ringa” while spinning crazily and then”down” and throws herself on the floor.
  • Muppets singing silly songs – She loves sitting beside Daddy and watching them on his laptop and constantly asks for “piggy, me me, beaker” every time Josh gets his laptop out.
  • Playing games on the iphone – Amelynne can start her couple of games on Josh’s iphone and can play the games really well, that require touching, swiping etc.

Amelynne has a great sense of humour and often makes us laugh and laughs a lot herself.

She is extremely caring and empathetic. When she thinks that we are bothered about something, even if it is just us grumbling at something insignificant, she drops whatever she is doing and runs to us offering a “huggy”.

She is very into “huggy’s” and is often giving and demanding that we give huggy’s to her toys, her shoes, her biscuit, her block, or anything else that she thinks might need a hug right at that moment.

Cool stuff

I’m having trouble keeping up to date so I thought that I might just try and do some little posts when Amelynne does something cool that I want to share and record for posterity. She is learning so many things and making great connections. Here are three that she has done recently:

Just Walking

Amelynne learnt to walk on Saturday night. By Sunday she was carrying around a couple of blocks and then by the end of the day she was carrying some quite large books around quite easily. On Monday I heard some grunting and banging and then Amelynne emerged from the kitchen carrying her very large highchair tray and looking very pleased with herself!

Blocks

The Dixon fam lent Amelynne a very fancy cube toy that plays different music when certain blocks are placed in the middle. After playing with it on and off for one morning, she had worked out not only where the blocks need to go to make it flash and play music, but which way up they needed to go.

Emotions and connections

I love watching all the connections that Amelynne is making at the moment while sorting out her world. I made a passing comment to her about something being sad and she frowned and made a sad whimpery noise. I was very impressed so asked her if she knew what happy is and she grinned and laughed! I was impressed enough with that but she then went and got her book called ‘How is Baby?’ about emotions and then sat down to read it.

12 Months Update

Cuter?

There are so many things that Amelynne has learnt in the last three months that this post is a little beyond me.

At nine months she was immobile and I could confidently sit her somewhere and she would still be there a few minutes later. Now she never sits down. She can pull herself up from any position, do a fast stomping pace around the furniture and she finally decided that she actually did need to crawl at 11 months so that she cross the gaps that she couldn’t reach. So she can now get everywhere that she wants to, and if you walk within grabbing distance you gain a little hitchhiker. My days are now spent in a permanent conga line of two.

Amelynne’s play has become so much more sophisticated as well. Instead of just holding, looking and sucking, she puts things together and takes them apart, and stacks things, puts blocks together and experiments (all while standing up of course). But the best toys of all nowadays are books. She loves being read to but also spends a lot of time just looking through them by herself. Nearly every time I wonder what she is doing because she is still and quiet, she’s browsing through a stack of books.

While she hasn’t said any more actual words, her language has developed so much. It’s very clear that she understands the majority of what we say to her. She looks at things we mention and knows what to expect when we tell her what we are going to do. Her babbling has also developed a huge range of sounds and intonation.

Talking of intonation Amelynne loves music. She can’t resist dancing when she hears any sort of music and quite often actually sways and bobs in time. She will also have a go at singing as well.

Well that is a vague attempt to record what Amelynne is up to but she is just learning and changing day by day and week by week at the moment. It’s such an exciting time as she is so eager to explore and learn.

First Birthday!!

Happy Birthday Amelynne!!!

Well it’s happened, Amelynne has turned one!!

We had a party the week before her birthday with family. She was initially a little shy and intimidated but she warmed up. She was a little overwhelmed by the presents though.

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But enjoyed the singing and had some cupcake.

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This is on her actual birthday, having a first ride on her rocking horse.

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Nine months update

It’s time for the regular three monthly update on all the amazing skills that Amelynne has acquired. Wow where do I start?

  • Language skills! Our small baby now understands English! So far Amelynne definitely knows the words: Hello, hey, high five, shake, bang, up, water, ready, clap, dance, stand, and Mummy. And…we are about 90% sure that she is also using “Mama” in the right context as her first word!!!
  • Physical skills: She can do so much more physically than when she was 6 months. She shuffles all over and around her mat on her bottom and has in the last week been moving more and more from her sitting position to a leaning position but then doesn’t know what to do next. Her hand-eye coordination is getting really good and she can now pick up very small pieces of fluff and peas etc in a pincer grip. Her most noticeable achievement in the last three months is that she can now stand by herself holding on to something (sometimes with only one hand). She just wants to stand all the time. Amazingly we actually managed to take a photo of a first! So this is a photo of Amelynne standing by herself for the first time :).

Out Standing!

  • Playing: Amelynne is often very busy and engrossed in playing now. It doesn’t seem as random anymore, but you can almost see her brain working as she concentrates and works. She loves putting small things into bigger things which means not only constantly stacking and restacking her cups but also putting anything else into her cups or other containers, if it fits it goes in. Her ring stacker is now a breeze and she does it with a very casual air, often even looking in another direction. She will have a go at trying anything that we show her. And when it comes to toys, if it makes a loud noise when shaken or banged against something else then the toy rocks, and if it doesn’t you can make up for the toys flaw by yelling or squealing while you play with it.

Catch up post

I’m really sorry that I haven’t been able to update for the last month or two. So to make up for it I thought that I would cram everything into one big catch up post. So here are the videos, photos and developments from the last two months.

Solid Foods

Amelynne is getting better and better and more enthusiastic about solid food. She is very good at helping and will most of the time refuse to have it unless she is holding and guiding the spoon as well (hmm I think she may have a bit of me in her). Here is a photo of her very first try of food (I told you it was old).

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Gorgeous photos

These are just a couple of gorgeous photos that we managed to take in which Amelynne actually smiled rather than giving her classic stunned I’m-having-a-photo-taken face.

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You can always tell by her hairstyle when Nana has just given her a bath :).

Playing and learning

Amelynne has learnt so many new skills when it comes to playing, including putting things in other things. Usually this is blocks etc in containers but sometimes it can be putting things in Daddy’s mouth…

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(Once again it’s very dark because I didn’t want to interrupt the game by turning on more lights).

We also tried to capture some video of general playing. It’s very hard though because no matter how much I try to hide the camera it always gets spotted and all playing and chatting dries up. Ah well she’s still cute though.

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Six Months!

I know that Amelynne is actually nearly 6 and a half months old but I’ve been meaning to do a post to mark her half birthday and just haven’t been able to get to it.

So…

In honour of reaching six months I thought I would have a go at recording all the things she has learnt since three months (that I can think of).

  • To sit very confidently
  • To push up high off the floor and scootch backwards
  • To roll over (well she did it at 4mths and not since but still)
  • To shake different toys differently to get the best sound out of them
  • To pass things from one hand to the other
  • To pick up things with only a few fingers
  • To blow raspberries
  • To do two things at once
  • To suck on her toes
  • To wee when we prompt her
  • To put different sounds together to make ‘words’
  • To bang things together
  • To keep doing things that make us laugh
  • To kiss
  • To turn pages of books
  • To help get dressed
  • To reach a long way to get toys and then sit back up again
  • To take things out of containers
  • To tip things out
  • Recognises songs she likes and the games that go with them
  • To be confident and splash in water
  • To take her dummy out and put it back in
  • She responds differently to different people

I’m sure that there are so many things that she has learnt that we can’t even see and things that she has put together that we will never know about. She is watching, and learning, and studying everything so much it’s amazing to wonder what her brain is learning and doing.

Happy half birthday little Amelynne Grace 🙂