Full Sentences

Hannah is now speaking in mostly full sentences. Usually her sentences are 4-5 words long and often grammatically correct, but every now and then she comes up with a doosey that really catches me off guard. For example, last week we were playing outside and she looked up at me and then pointed to the sidewalk behind me and said, "I see a girl riding on a bike." I turned around and sure enough there WAS a girl riding on a bike. One of her favorite new phrases to use is "I want some. . . ." She uses this A LOT now. In the beginning it was cute and actually very helpful, but she can get VERY sassy and bossy about it when she thinks we aren't moving fast enough or when we tell her that she can't have some. Along with the sassing using "I want some" Hannah has also started to just generally sass back if she's in a bad mood, tired, or not happy with the outcome of the situation. Consequently we've been spending lots of time in time out for not talking to mommy nicely.

Hannah had a good weekend with Mamaw and Papaw. I don't think she wanted to go home. She'd much rather be spoiled by them than obey us! While there she got to help feed the horses and feed Zeke and visit with her Great Grandma Frye. Grandma Frye had this really cool Lion that sang "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" that Hannah got a big kick out of.

Potty training continues to go well. Hannah is now totally bowl trained. I haven't had to change a poopy diaper in almost 3 weeks which I LOVE! She is pooping in the toilet 2-3 times every day and always holds it until she is on the potty. Urine training is taking a little bit longer. Either it's harder to hold because her bladder is so small or she just doesn't always slow down enough to listen to her body telling her that she needs to pee. If we take her to the potty she always pees in the toilet and sometimes she will tell us that she needs to go pee in the potty. BUT if you ask her if she needs to pee she will always answer no even if I know she needs to go. She does really well staying dry in the the morning and we usually have very few if any accidents until after her nap. Once she starts to get wore out in the afternoon and once Daddy gets home she seems to have more accidents. The good thing is that she HATES having accidents and will usually tell me either as soon as she has wet her pants or often even while she is peeing. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction and we will be able to give up diapers for good soon. Last week Hannah peed in a public toilet for the first time and she hasn't looked back since. I was a bit worried about how it would work and if she would be scared of the big hole and the automatic flushes, but she did really well. We were playing at the play place at the mall and she told me she needed to go so I took her in and she was still dry and she went on the toilet. She asked to go 3 times that trip and each time she was dry and went on the potty. She has since used lots of different public toilets and did great. After two scary incidents of falling into the potty (once with Kyle and once with Mamaw) I am really surprised that she's doing as well as she is with toilets that aren't hers, but it hasn't seemed to have affected her much at all, though she does mention the incidents from time to time.

Further evidence that we have a very clever little girl is the fact that the other night in the bathtub she spelled her name for Kyle! I haven't witnessed this feat yet, but he said he wrote the letter H on the tub with her tub crayons and said, "H for Hannah" and she said, "A N N A H" He immediately screamed for me to come into the bathroom to tell me about it and see if she would do it again, but she wouldn't do it for me. Another thing she did the other day was while she was in time out while Grandpa was here. I knew she would want to talk to Grandpa if she could see him so I moved her timeout mat to another room so she couldn't see him. She got up from her mat so she got a spank and I told her to not get off of her mat otherwise she would get another spank. SOOOO, she instead pushed her mat (while keeping her bottom firmly planted on it) all the way across the room until she could poke her head around the doorway and say, "Hi Grandpa!"

I'm finally caught up on uploading videos to Google. You will actually be seeing some videos that where shot in the month I posted them!

Here is Hannah sleeping in a pile of books. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1700261361283996005

Hannah riding her rocking horse. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6352894557630971711

Yet more singing of Jesus Loves Me. Can you tell that it's one of her favorite songs? http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3103739513243965899

Hannah loves to put on shoes and walk around the house in them even if they aren't her shoes. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4991832622610802384

Hannah pretending to be an elephant. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-620977543241417026

Hannah still enjoys playing her harmonica. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9039278633584431556

Here's Hannah being the tickler this time. She's tickling her sister Kayla. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4709846652047116653

Gotta Go

Potty training is going very well for Hannah. In fact, she is almost potty training herself. The past 2 days she has been telling me when she has to pee and hasn't had a single BM in her diaper and very few pee accidents. Almost all of the times she has peed in her diaper have been either at night or early morning before I wake up and she's just hanging out in her room reading or while she's sleeping during her nap. Today she didn't have a single accident and even held it 3 different times when I told her that I couldn't take her to the bathroom right then (we were driving back from gymnastics, at the park, and jogging with Kyle). She only went through 2 diapers the entire day and the only one that was wet enough for me to tell it was wet before I took it off was the one I changed after her nap. I probably didn't even need to change the second one when we put her to bed, but it had been taken off and on so many times that day that I thought the Velcro might not be in a good enough shape to last the night so we put on a fresh one. She didn't wear big girl underwear today because we were out and about away from bathrooms so much today, but tomorrow we plan to get back into them. She's been wearing them pretty much all the time now unless we are away from home. The poor thing really DOES NOT want to have an accident and gets practically frantic if she thinks that she's going to have one. I rush her to the bathroom thinking she's already peed, but then she's dry as a bone and then goes a ton in the toilet. If she really does have an accident she starts to cry and says "change the diaper, change the diaper" in a hysterical voice. I've never scolded her for having an accident, but somehow she gets that it's not a good thing. She has so much pride each time she goes to the potty and her big girl underwear is dry. She sings a little song (which she made up herself that is a variation on the song I sing to her when she pees or poops in the potty) each time she's dry that goes like this, "Hannah's dry, Hannah's dry, Hannah's pants are dry! YEAH!" and then claps her hands. It makes me smile so big!

Hannah has a big occasion coming up this weekend. She's spending the night at Mamaw and Papaw's house and she's seriously pumped about it. She's positive they are going to take her outside to play in the woods with Zeke (their dog) and she keeps telling me this every chance she gets. Today she asked me over and over if she was going to sleep at Mamaw's tonight. She's not quite got a grasp on the passage of time and the future yet so I guess we'll have to just keep going through this dialogue until Saturday rolls around and she actually DOES get to sleep at Mamaw's. Hopefully all will go well and she actually WILL sleep.

Here's a head's up for all of you planners out there like me who like to "save the date" for things. Hannah's party this year will be the weekend before her birthday because her birthday falls on 4th of July weekend (I'm sure this will happen often) and I know that would be hectic for everyone. The party will be on Saturday June 28th from 2-3:30. We are having it at the gym where she takes gymnastics this year and I think it will be a lot of fun. The best part is that I won't have to do ANY clean up or set up at all. They will take care of all of that and they even provide an hour's worth of gymnastics instruction and games for the kids. I'll get everyone directions and stuff when it gets closer to time. Interestingly enough, Hannah has become keenly interested in birthdays lately. Our neighbor is having his 5th birthday party this weekend and he's been talking about it for weeks. Every time he sees us he tells us about the Sponge Bob party he's going to have and that he will be five. Hannah has just randomly been saying that Zach's 5 and Hannah's 1 and Evelyn's 1 ever since the first time Zach told us about his party. Then today at gymnastics it was one of her classmates' birthday and we sang her Happy Birthday and Hannah loved the song. She kept wanting to tell Sam Happy Birthday and then tonight at dinner she just randomly blurted out, "Happy Birthday Sam!" Her party should be really fun because she'll get it this year and she will have just gone to a party a few weeks before for her friend Addie so the idea of a birthday party should be fresh in her mind.

Today we took Hannah for a walk with the dogs for the very first time. Neither of our dogs are great on the leash (Abby lags behind and often has to be drug along and Ella sprints ahead choking herself!) so it's not a huge shock that we weren't keen to try to handle them with a toddler on the lose or even with a stroller. Tonight both dogs were in usual walk mode, but we put an extra leash on Abby for Hannah to hold and decided to give it a try. She had a blast and so did we. It was funny to see her getting pulled back by the leash as she wandered off course completely clueless about what was holding her back!

Here are some more videos that I finally got uploaded to Google.

Hannah is so ticklish! http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3620203422170354640&hl=en

Hannah and Addie coloring. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3412103643176809925&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7612057443526193488&hl=en

Hannah is reading a book when she is supposed to be sleeping. If you listen closely you can hear her saying, "How many kisses do you want tonight? Mommy kiss. ~smack~ How many kisses do you want tonight? Just one. ~smack~" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-224267902175712086&hl=en

In this video Hannah is singing Old McDonald instead of sleeping. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6412166977236602850&hl=en

Numbers

My little girl just blows my mind. Tonight I about fell into the bathtub as I was washing her hair. She was playing with the water and I wasn't paying much attention until I heard her say, "I see a number 4." Before I could even process what she had said she pointed at it on the measuring cup she was holding. Then she said, "I see a number 2." Then she pointed to it on the cup. I ended up asking her if she could find other numbers and she pointed to 0-6, and 8 on the measuring cup (there wasn't a 7 or a 9) all in random order. At first I thought maybe she was somehow counting them and she was guessing the numerals that way, but then I realized that the side she was looking at was counting the ounces by 2s. Then I flipped the cup over and started asking her the numbers 0-5 in random order from the (100-500) ml side of the cup. The reason I'm so amazed by this newest feat of hers is that I HAVEN'T taught her or worked with her on numerals except for 0-2 from her home preschool program. She has either learned them from her Baby Einstein/Sesame Street DVDs or from her counting books. I'm not sure which did it, but it's certain that any of the learning was simply soaked up and not directly taught. I think it's just crazy how easy numbers come to her. They don't come easy to me. If Hannah wasn't adopted I'd say she got her number smarts from her daddy the engineer, but Kyle's gene's had nothing to do with it! :) My little girl's just smart.

Yesterday we had a nice visit with Tiffany, Hannah's birthmother, and her twins and Tiffany's mom. We had Easter pictures taken with all of the kids again like we did last year and it went much better this time. Last year was a complete and utter disaster as far as the pictures were concerned. Chase was so excited to see Hannah that he was invading her personal space which is never a good idea with Hannah, we had a male photographer who wasn't good with any of the kids, and Hannah was experiencing severe stranger and separation anxiety. The combination was not good. We didn't get a single good picture of the 3 of them. This year we had a much more successful time. Tiffany and I were laughing as we were looking at the proofs because the pics we were immediately dismissing this year were as good as or better than the one we eventually ended up buying last year! Hannah had a blast running around chasing Chase and tickling Kayla. She even warmed up quickly to Tiffany and let her hold her and gave spontaneous hugs, kisses, and "I Love You"s as we were leaving. I was so proud of my little girl for making her birthfamily feel so happy.

Potty training is going fairly well. Hannah pees every single time I sit her on the potty almost as soon as I get her up there. She definitely knows how to pee at will. We got her some big girl underwear and plastic covers and have had two full days (not in a row though!) wearing them. The first day we started out strong and then quickly fell apart. We went through every single pair of underwear before it was even 2:00pm! We also went through almost all of her pants! Part of the problem was that I wasn't very organized and I really had no idea exactly how often she really needed to pee since diapers are so absorbent that you can't really tell they are wet until they are very wet. Consequently, I had no way of knowing if she peed a lot all at once or a little bit at a time until it all added up to a wet diaper. I found out it was the latter that fist day. Today I had a better plan of action and set a timer to take her to the bathroom every 30 minutes. She actually peed every single time a significant amount. We had only had one accident by 4:00pm! Then as she started to get tired and cranky things went down hill and we had 3 more accidents before it was time for bed at 7:00pm, but I still think that it was a successful day considering it was only her second time ever wearing big girl underwear. She even managed to poop in the potty 2 separate times today too!
Another sign that my little girl is growing up is that she has officially ditched her highchair. We got her this really cool thing that boosts her chair at the table up. Instead of a booster seat that sits on top of the chair and then Hannah sits in the booster, this is a device that the chair sits on top of and lifts the chair up so that Hannah actually sits on the dining room table chair just like Kyle and I do. It's called a Kaboost and it's really cool. Kudos to Kyle for finding it on the Internet.

School continues to go well. Tomorrow will be the end of our 4th week. The theme this week was eyes and Hannah as usual got really into it. The theme for next week is lighthouses which I'm not super excited about so I'll be interested to see how much Hannah likes it. I can't imagine lighthouses will be very interesting for an extremely active 21 month old girl. Maybe I'll be surprised. Today when we worked on our alphabet the only letters Hannah failed to identify (in random order) on the first try were N, U, and X. She called N "z" and X "y" I thought that was really pretty good. The sounds she currently knows are A, B, C, D, E, I, H, J, M, P, R, S, T, W, and Z. She has A-D, M, W, and R mastered. The other ones can be hit or miss sometimes.
Here are some videos from the last few months that I finally got uploaded onto Google. Enjoy.

Hannah reading books. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4767920472411038267&hl=en

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6115836828758160927&hl=en

Hannah and I playing Super Grover. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5298892368292382119&hl=en

Hannah splashing in her first puddle. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6569501497617515300&hl=en
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7218410685235990009&hl=en