Irrational Laughter

This past weekend was rough at the Spontak house. Kyle has some sort of viral throat infection, thankfully not strep and I caught a particularly nasty stomach virus that KICKED MY BUTT. Consequently sensory diets were not high on our list of things to do and poor Hannah received very little quality time Saturday (Sunday Kyle was doing a bit better and was a fantastic Daddy even though he still didn't feel tip top), dare I say little attention period! As a result of the lack of heavy work and attention, behaviors skyrocketed on Hannah's end and we had little patience for dealing with them appropriately or heading them off at the pass. It was a vicious cycle. On Sunday I watched as Hannah disobeyed and then smarted off to Kyle as he attempted to discipline her (I don't even remember what she did or said) as I sat completely devoid of energy, dizzy, and just trying to keep what little was in my stomach in there. For some reason the absurdity of the situation struck me and I began to laugh. Laughing made me more nauseous and also hurt my overtaxed abs from all the vomiting. The pain became so intense that I was crying all the while still laughing. It was such a WEIRD sensation. I wasn't laughing so hard I was crying in the normal sense, but yet I was laughing and crying at the same time and unable to stop either. Kyle and Hannah just stared at me confused. Luckily I didn't get screamed at or hit (Hannah doesn't really care for other people's laughter because she usually thinks it's directed at her although this time in a way it was so she might have been justified at being upset!) and I managed to somehow not throw up all over the dining room. The odd thing was that after that bout of irrational laughter my mood was much better even though I still felt awful. Nothing pleasant or good had happened, just more of the same, but the simple act of laughing uncontrollably cheered me up. I guess that maybe laughter really is the best medicine.

The new bedtime routine is going pretty well. Last week Hannah slept completely through the night for the first time since at least May. It may well have been even longer than May, but we know for sure that we hadn't had a full uninterrupted night of sleep since moving into the house. It was amazing how refreshed I felt that first morning. Hannah was better behaved too. I'm sure lack of sleep has been making us all cranky and impatient. Hopefully the success continues. Oh, and she's also managed to stay dry on her own ever since we stopped waking her up to pee as well. Yahoo to full night's sleep and no more pee soaked sheets!

Just within the last week Hannah has realized that she can read. I mean she's known she can read for a long time, but now she'll actually pick up a book independently and read the words she sees rather than making up her own story or just looking at the pictures. Before she would only actually read a book if asked to read it. If left to her own devices she'd much rather make up her own version of the story. Last week though, something switched. She's been asking to read to us instead of asking us to read to her. She's been reading aloud in the van to pass the time. She's independently and almost without conscious thought using the skills she has to make her life easier and more informed. For example, she'll see a piece of paper on the counter, look at it and read what it says and then ask questions about what it says. She'll read the titles flashed on the screen before her Curious George TV shows start so she knows what to expect. She's checking the school calendar to know what the day holds before I tell her. Reading has switched from being something she could do easily, but chose not to do, to something she does without thinking like adults do. It's now something that just happens. She sees a word and it's read. It's like she can't not read it now. Not only is it read, but it's processed, understood, and used to her advantage. I have a feeling a whole new world has just opened up to my little girl. It's going to be exciting, but heaven help us as we cope with all the new information that brain of hers is going to be packing!

Hannah seems to have handled Kyle going back to work quite well. I guess I underestimated her. We had a few rocky days, but on the whole she's done fine. We're still trying to getting back into the grove of our old routine, but that will come I think. I hope it will anyway!

The last few days Hannah has been eating like crazy. She's been consuming more food in any given day than I normally would! I know she's grown lately because Kyle pointed out to me that her houseslippers are definitely too small for her (yet there's no way I'm going to be able to get rid of them until I have a replacement pair!) and I felt her shoes today and I'm pretty sure it's time for a new pair of them too. That's one of the drawbacks of her being able to do her shoes completely independently is that I don't have a daily check on how her shoes are fitting. She certainly hasn't mentioned that they are too tight, but they definitely are! I've also had to retire several shirts and pants this past month. Come spring time I'm going to have to buy her a whole new short sleeved shirt wardrobe because I don't think she has more than one or two that could be worn alone and be considered decent. The clothes in her closet right now are shirts sized 5-6 and pants 4T (a little short, but at least they'll stay up!) and dresses 5-6. Her current shoes are 11s and her slippers were 11/12s. She's only 3 1/2 for pete's sake! This girl totally is going to out grown me before she's half way through elementary school.

3 1/2 Years Old

Yesterday Hannah officially turned 3 1/2 years old. At the rate she's going she just might drive me insane before she turns 4! She absolutely cannot accept what you say without a fight. If you tell her the sky is blue, she will say, "No it's not. It's green." If you say, "It's time to eat dinner," she will say, "No it isn't." On and on and on it goes ALL. DAY. LONG. every single day. It's to the point that I don't even know how to handle it. No amount of discipline or ignoring it seems to make any difference what-so-ever. Every time she utters "No" my blood pressure raises just a little bit more so that by the time it's bedtime I'm a quivering mess. Is this amount of defiance typical in a 3 year old or are we just horrible parents? Someone please throw me a bone before I lose it on my intensely opinionated 3 1/2 year old.

Night-time potty training is going quite well for Hannah. I honestly can't remember the last time she had an accident at night. We were waking her up right before we headed to bed to take her to the bathroom one last time and that was working quite well until she started waking up and not going back to sleep. So, we stopped waking her up to see if she would start having accidents again and so far so good. She's been waking up on her own at least once a night to go to the bathroom and thus far she hasn't had an accident. The only problem is that it hasn't really helped with the night waking/not wanting to go back to sleep. She's averaging 3-4 times getting up a night. I would say that only 1 or 2 of those times does she actually need to pee and the tantrums she throws when we try to insist that she go back to sleep are spectacular. It seems like every time we solve one sleep issue, another one rears it's ugly head again. At least for now at least she's falling asleep initially each night quite quickly. Getting ready for bed though, that's a different matter entirely. We are currently in the process of trying out a new bedtime routine to try to cut down on some of the trauma associated with the simple task of getting ready for bed. Wish us luck that we'll have some success.

Next week is the week that Kyle will probably go back to work as long as he gets to go ahead from his surgeon. I'm nervous about how Hannah's going to take it. We've been doing our best to prepare her, but she's gotten awfully used to Daddy being home all the time. She likes Daddy taking her to school and picking her up. She likes having breakfast with him in the morning and just generally getting to spend so much time with him. I'm going to miss him too, but I'm going to also have the added stress of dealing with the behavioral outbursts that I'm sure are going to happen. At least school will be back on a somewhat regular schedule so she'll have 3 days a week that she'll be distracted.

Whoop! There it Is!

I apologize for the recent quietness on the blog, but we've been under the weather here at the Spontak house-for about six weeks. It started with Hannah and a moderate cold, or so we thought, that turned into pneumonia. Surprise, surprise! Then I became sick with a cold and then a nasty cough that increased in severity and never let up. Then Kyle got sick and ended up with a cough too. Of course Hannah had a cough too. We were a fine bunch to listen to-still are in fact since we still haven't stopped hacking and barking away. Turns out what we thought was just a cold was not an innocent cold virus, but instead Pertussis or better known as Whooping Cough. Leave it to us to come down with another archaic disease straight out of Oregon Trail. Last year was Scarlet Fever. This year Whooping Cough. Now all we need is Typhoid Fever and we'll have survived the Oregon Trail trifecta! For those of you not familiar with the computer game Oregon Trail. It became popular back in the 80's. I used to play it back in the day on the old Apple IIe's with the black and green screens. It was loads of fun. Those of you who grew up in the 80s or who had children who did probably know this game intimately! Apparently Whooping Cough is making a come back due to under vaccination and since your protection from the vaccine wanes after 10 years or so after your last dose (around 4 years old) you become susceptible again to anyone infected with the disease. So, Hannah who hasn't had her full round of vaccinations for it yet caught it and then passed it on to Kyle and I with our diminished protection since we're a bit past 14 years old. Fortunately since we all have at least some protection the disease is milder than it might otherwise have been for all 3 of us, but it's still mighty uncomfortable and definitely annoying. According to the doctor it could take up to 3 months for us to fully recover. I'm praying it doesn't take that long. I could certainly use a good night's sleep well before then.


Hannah continues to thrive at preschool and is permanently going full day now. I feel so blessed that we were able to find this preschool that is so sensitive to her needs and also doesn't put up with any crap from her either. They seem to know exactly how much to push and when to lay low. Hannah is making friends and has several little boys that she is particularly fond of. She always was one to prefer men! She also has one little girl who seems to be her partner in crime. It's so good to walk into the classroom and see her interacting without adult prompting or facilitation with her peers. Unfortunately her new found social skills at school don't seem to be transferring to other places. In fact, I would venture to say that she's become even more fearful and reluctant to play with or interact with other kids outside of school. It's to the point at the play place that she won't even go up into the play structure and play by herself if there are other kids around. That's quite frustrating, but at least I know she's getting social practice at school. I just wish we could find some way to generalize those skills to other situations.

We are preparing for a two week trip, starting next week, back home to Indiana and Ohio for Thanksgiving and Hannah is seriously pumped. She can't wait to go back to Indiana. She's especially excited to see her friend Evelyn and meet Evelyn's new baby sister Vivian. It should be a whirlwind trip with little time for relaxation so I pray we all handle it well. We plan to visit with all the grandparents and some of the great grandparents, aunts and uncles, Hannah's birth family, and some friends. I hope we can squeeze it all in there. People have a tendency to get mad if they get left out, but we can't be two places at once and we only have so much time. Really we will probably be over extending ourselves as it is, but we still won't be able to make everyone happy. :(

The other day Hannah surprised me by demonstrating that she knows her ordinal numbers (at least up to the fifth place). She told me she was going to tell me five stories and then as she told me each one she said things like, "The first one is about. . . Here is the second story. . . Next is the third story. . ." and so on. I had no idea she knew those. I've never explicitly taught her them. It must either be something they learned at school or that she just picked up. She's always amazing me by the things that she just absorbs when we aren't looking. I'm sure it helps that she's got a mind like a steel trap and NEVER forgets anything. I can't remember exactly what it was, but just the other day she recounted for me with pin point accuracy something that happened last February that I'm pretty sure we hadn't discussed since it happened (or at least not recently)! I was completely shocked of course.

Night time potty training is finally going well. We had a few months of accidents almost every other day and I was starting to regret my decision to ditch the pull ups at bedtime, but all of a sudden she seems to be doing ok and we've had 20 days with only 1 accident! It's been so nice to not be washing urine soaked bedding every single day. That was getting really old. We are still getting her up when we go to bed to potty one last time for the night, but that's not too bad. I can handle that if it means no more diapers and no more (or at least very few) accidents.

Hannah seems to be adjusting well to her braces. She doesn't seem to mind wearing them at all (at least no more than she minds wearing socks in general.) The one thing she doesn't particularly care for about them is walking long distances in them. She will start saying her feet hurt. I can't really say that I blame her. After all her foot isn't on a cushy insole anymore, but instead on hard plastic. The orthotic technician that made her brace was able to trim it down significantly so that it's very unobtrusive. He cut it so her toes can hang over the end and was able to trim the top down so that it ends just above her ankle bones instead of mid shin. I am extremely grateful for that. I think that makes them much more comfortable for Hannah and she doesn't stand out wearing them. In fact you really don't notice them at all unless you look for them because they sit mostly inside her shoes.

Writing Machine

Lately Hannah has turned into a little writing machine. Now that she's mastered the alphabet and begun to crack the code as far as reading she's moving on to another challenge-writing legibly. She's been able to write H for the longest time, but now she's not as interested in learning to write single letters-even ones she can't do yet. Now she wants to write WORDS. So far she can independently write CAT and HAT and is really close on writing her name. A 6 letter word is a bit daunting even if there are only 3 different letters! She can write many other words if you spell them for her, but cat and hat she knows how to spell and can write without any prompting. Lately her favorite single letter to write is E. It's her newest addition to her collection and the first letter in Evelyn's name so that makes it special I think. Here's a running count of the letters she can independently and legibly (about 80 percent of the time) write: A, C, E, F, H, I, L, N, O, Q, and T. She's getting really close to being about to do D, B, U, M, V, and X, but those letters aren't always legible if you didn't know what letter she was writing beforehand. She's also started to do some meaningful drawing although we don't always know what it is she's doing. The two coolest examples involved the use of her magnetic writing toy that she got from Kyle's aunt and uncle for Christmas. It has these little magnetic stamps in the shapes of animals. She took one of the stamps that is a duck and stamped it on the screen and then took the pencil and drew a circle around the duck. Then she turned to me and said, "The duck's in the pond." The other instance that really got me was when she was returning from Mamaw and Papaw's house one day. I was so shook up I had to call them right away to ask if they had taught her the skill or if she came up with it on her own. When we left my parent's house someone had drawn a smiley face on the toy and left if on there instead of erasing it. Hannah took the pencil and drew circles around the eyes and said, "Mommy, he's wearing glasses!"

Potty training is going VERY well. We've made the switch completely to big girl underwear during the day, even when we are out, except for naps. Hannah rarely has accidents anymore and I've stopped taking her to the bathroom except for when she tells me she had to go unless we are getting ready to get into the car. I've made a rule that we ALWAYS at least try to go pee before we leave home since there is no bathroom in the van! I am so thrilled to be rid of diapers. It is absolutely liberating to not have to worry about toting along tons of them or searching for sales on them at the store. However, now I have several packages of them leftover from sale expeditions that I have to figure out what to do with. I'm considering selling them on craigslist for a discounted price to get some of my investment back.

Going along with Hannah's independence in potty training, she had made several more steps towards becoming a big girl. She has given up sippy cups altogether except for car rides and independently washes her own hands after going to the bathroom as long as she can reach everything. One day she went to the bathroom by herself and once i heard her get off the toilet I went to check on her and she was "washing" her hands except she couldn't get the water turned on so she was just squirting more and more of her purple foamy soap on her hands. It was absolutely EVERYWHERE on the counter, sink, and cabinets.

In two weeks Hannah starts preschool. I'm very nervous about it. Hannah on the other hand is pumped. Everyday she asks if she has preschool. She's really excited about having a teacher. I'm not sure she quite realizes that there will be other kids there and the teachers won't be there solely to teach her stuff. Hopefully it all goes well and that she really learns how to interact with kids her age well.

Two Years Old

Happy Birthday Hannah! I can't believe it, but my baby is two years old. Where in the world did the time go? This past year has brought so many joys and challenges that I can hardly believe we managed to fit it all into one year! As promised, I have many more updates for you all. I'll start with Hannah's party since that is the title of this post. We had the party at the gym where Hannah takes gymnastics class and it was wonderful. Hannah was relaxed and totally in her element. She had a blast and was a good hostess as well. Little did we know that by having the party at the gym we were picking the best possible location/activity to set Hannah up for success with all of those people (more about that in just a sec). Hannah of course was spoiled rotten by all the gifts, love, and attention she received. She still hasn't stopped talking about some of her favorite things from the party. After the official party was over several people went out for a late lunch/early dinner and just sat around and chatted. Hannah did a great job of spreading the love around and visited each table for an extended amount of time with no fuss at all. It was a great day! Thanks to all who were able to come and share Hannah's special day. Those who couldn't make it, we missed you.

Ok, back to what I was saying about our venue choice for the party. As I mentioned in my last post, Hannah started seeing a developmental therapist for her social issues. On her first visit the therapist did some additional testing on Hannah and determined that sensory integration problems were at the root of Hannah's social difficulties. We had never even considered that Hannah had sensory issues. The tests showed that Hannah had oral and tactile defensiveness, low threshold, low registration, and sensation avoiding. Unless you are an OT this probably means nothing to you. Even after the research I've done it's hard for me to understand fully, but what it basically boils down to is that because Hannah is concentrating so much on these sensory issues she has little energy or tolerance to deal with socially challenging situations. The therapist is creating what is called a sensory diet for Hannah to help her meet some of these unmet sensory needs she has and to desensitize her to some of the stimuli she is defensive to. Contrary to what it sounds like, a sensory diet is not food at all. It's a list of specific activities designed to provide certain sensory needs throughout the day. Hannah's personalized sensory diet is not complete, but the therapist gave us a list of activities to try out and use on our own and we are already seeing amazing results. Today Hannah played with a 4 year old boy in the crowded playplace at the mall for almost 20 minutes! She was interacting with him, having conversations with him, displaying parallel play, and even initiating play. This has NEVER happened before. The other day the same thing happened with Evelyn. Hannah played very well with Evelyn and even shared a VERY cramped space inside her toy car. Hannah was even the one that initiated that arrangement! Apparently many of the activities involved in gymnastics and tumbling meet Hannah's specific needs which explains why we have always noticed that she was much more tolerant of other kids while in her gymnastics class. I was always puzzled by this given how chaotic the environment is, but seeing the results of her preliminary sensory diet makes me a believer. Hannah will continue with gymnastics for as long as she remains interested and we can afford it. We are so pleased so far with Hannah's therapy and are SO hopeful that things are going to continue going well.

Potty training is going quite well. Hannah has had 3 days of being dry all day-including her nap. Now these weren't 3 days in a row dry, but it's still a really good start. She's also getting a lot better about telling us when she has to go potty before she actually has an accident. She's definitely not 100 % in that area since there are many many things she would rather be doing than sitting on the toilet, but it's progress none the less. The other day I was in a store that had a play area for kids. I was standing just behind a rack so that she couldn't see me, but I could hear her. She stopped playing, called for me and when I came to get her she said, "I need to poop. Then play again?" She was willing to stop playing and go to the bathroom as long as I reassured her that she could go back to playing as soon as she was done. I was so proud of her!

Hannah had another overnight at Mamaw and Papaw's house a few weeks ago and she had a blast. I think she wore them out, but they seemed like they did ok. She was totally pumped to go stay so that she could feed the horses. That girl REALLY likes feeding the horses. Speaking of horses, Hannah also went to visit Aunt Heather and ride Harley. Hannah LOVED riding Harley and even got to trot all by herself. Harley was such a good boy doing pony rides for everyone. Hannah really liked visiting Heather and even made Heather take her to the bathroom and hold her once when she got hurt. Heather may not be a kid fan, but Hannah's sure latched onto her.

One of Hannah's newest skills that we aren't especially pleased with is opening doors. She can now get into and out of pretty much any room that doesn't have a baby proofed handle. Consequently, we now have to lock her into her bedroom at night and for naps. This DOES NOT make her happy, but we can't have her just wandering the house by herself at night. Speaking of getting out of her room, the other day Kyle forgot to lock her door when he put her to bed. The next morning we were awakened by Hannah coming into our room and grabbing Kyle. We didn't even hear her open her door or ours! She has also learned how to open bi fold closet doors. Several times I have come into her room after naps to find all of her dresser drawers emptied and the clothes hid around the room, diaper packages opened and the diapers mangled and strewn about, and the trash can emptied and scattered around the room. One day she even found the wipes container and pulled every single wipe out and wadded them up and threw them around the room! UGH!

Hannah has been playing a lot lately with her new play dough and sidewalk chalk. She gets quite a kick out of them both. They are hours of cheap fun. Fortunately these are both activities that the therapist recommended as part of her sensory diet so it's nice to not have to try to squeeze in all totally new things. Jumping is another skill that Hannah is working on perfecting and she is getting quite brave about it. She regularly attempts (and sometimes succeeds if I'm not careful) to jump off of our deck from the top step or to jump off of chairs and the couches. The therapist told us that jumping on a trampoline was also a recommended activity so we used one of her birthday gift cards to buy her an indoor mini trampoline with handles for her to hold onto. It just came in the mail yesterday so we haven't had a ton of time to play on it yet, but so far it's been a hit.

I've mentioned before that Hannah has been naming things lately. Well, she has this cabbage patch doll that she got for Christmas. It's wearing a green and red sleeper and reindeer antlers. It's a baby girl and I forget it's real name, but Hannah has officially christened it Phil. One of our friends who Hannah loves is named Phil so really he should consider it an honor, but it's pretty funny to think of a big macho guy sharing a name with a green and red cabbage patch doll wearing reindeer antlers!

I Woked Up

Hannah has been quite the precocious little girl lately (really what's new?) and has been coming up with all sorts of phrases, song lyric remixes, and stalling techniques that really keep us on our toes. One of her current favorite lines is "I woked up." She uses this when she wakes up from a nap or in the morning as well as when she's been supposed to be napping, but doesn't want to and is trying to get out of her room to do something that she's been told she can ONLY do after she naps. She's also started knocking on her door to ask to get out of her room. That is pretty funny/cute, but also awfully hard to ignore when you'd rather be sleeping! Tonight when I was putting her to bed she started singing along with me as I was singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to her and each time we got to the end of a line she would shout the last word. It was so hard for me to keep a straight face and keep singing like nothing was wrong. I knew she was just gearing up for a confrontation that would postpone bedtime, but it was funny none the less because it was clever and a new trick in her arsenal. Speaking of singing, lately Hannah has been inventing new words to songs she already knows all the lyrics too. She's not accidentally misquoting the lyrics, she's deliberately singing something different because she thinks it's funny. For example, she knows all the words to the ABC song and recently she started inserting random words/names of people into the middle of the song. The song goes something like this, "ABCDEF Daddy HIJKLMNO Mommy QRSTU tree WXY and Kevin. Sometimes she uses the same word for all the interludes, sometimes it's a different word every time, sometimes she starts back up with the next letter and sometimes the missing letter is actually replaced by the inserted word like in the example above. It amazes me that she can think up a word to insert, remember what letter or line of a song she left off with, and pick back up with the correct letter/line of the song after the new word all without missing a beat or pausing in the tempo of the song at all. My favorite of them all was Twinkle Twinkle little Mommy :) My little girl makes me smile so much!

A new academic skill that Hannah is beginning to pick up is identifying the letter a word begins with just by it's sound. I bet I quizzed her with 30 words the other day while she was sitting on the potty (I tried to mix it up and use words we have used as examples of starting with a certain letter, words we've never mentioned in conjunction with letters before, and words that I thought she might never have even heard before) and she correctly identified the beginning letter of at least 20 of them. A few words she missed she had the right sound but wrong letter. Sun and jelly for example she said started with c and g respectively. Another new thing I found her doing the other day was playing with her Little People A-Z Learning Zoo all by herself. Don't get me wrong, she plays with it all the time by herself, but this time I came in to find her to have correctly placed about a dozen of the 26 animals on their corresponding alphabet circles on the zoo mat.

Up until now, Hannah has had no interest in naming any of her stuffed animals, toys, dolls, etc, but all of a sudden she decided to name her 3 Breyer horses that Aunt Heather gave her. I've tried to trick her to see if the names are set in stone or if they would change every time, but so far she's been resolute and doesn't like to be questioned much about her decision! She named one of them Mia and the other two are both named Jack-o. She has been playing with them constantly and always makes me be the same one of the Jack-o's even if I ask to be a different one.

One exciting milestone Hannah had was her first nap that she woke up dry from. That particular day she went the entire day without a single accident even while sleeping. I was so proud of her, but she didn't seem to be all that concerned one way or the other. She's getting much better about telling us when she needs to pee, but she's still far from telling us every time and we still have a lot of accidents after about 2:00pm or so. I'm not sure if she's just tired and doesn't notice or if she's just fed up with paying attention! Either way, our track record for staying dry while awake after say about noon is drastically worse than before noon.

Busy Busy

We have been incredibly busy lately and I am finally looking forward to a weekend with NOTHING on the calendar! Because of all of our busyness, Hannah has been a bit cranky lately, but hopefully that will work itself out now that we are calming our schedule down a bit.

The gymnastics show a few weeks ago was a big success. Hannah had a great time and Kyle and Grandpa got some awesome photos. I used photoshop and made composite images for every kid in the show. It was a lot of work, but I had fun doing it and those parents that I got to talk to really liked their pics. Last weekend Tiffany's twins had their 5th birthday so Hannah got to see them and she had a blast at the party. She especially loved playing on Kayla and Chase's swing set. The same weekend Hannah had her gymnastics meet we also did the March of Dimes March for Babies (formerly known as Walk America). This year Hannah was one of Lilly's poster kids because the antiviral that cured Hannah's herpes and saved her from serious neurological damage was developed using a grant from the March of Dimes. Hannah had fun on the walk and loved seeing all the dogs the people had with them.

Hannah's language skills continue to grow by leaps and bounds. She is now praying on her own and will often incorporate the day's events into her prayers and not just recite a standard memorized prayer. We had no idea she could pray like that until one night when we bowed our heads to say our bedtime prayers she just started praying! Here is what she said, "Dear Jesus, Thank you for the day. Fun with Grandpa, fun with Daddy, fun with Mommy. Amen" This was the night of her gymnastics show and she had had a very fun day and seen Grandpa. Kyle and I were both shocked. The other day we were sitting at a stop sign and a bus pulled up beside us and Hannah said. "I see a bus. I see an octagon." The bus started to pull forward and she said, "I see another octagon. Two octagons." She was pointing at the stop signs on the arms of the school bus! Then, tonight she got in trouble for chewing on one of the letters on her play mat and Kyle put her in time out. She started to cry and then called out, "I'm sorry Daddy for chewing the M." On Monday she had a doctor's appointment and when the doctor came in she looked at him and said, "Leave the door open please Dr. Hendrick." I thought the doctor was going to keel over. He turned to me and said, "What 2 year old talks like that!?!" I replied, "but she's not even 2!"

She now knows all of her alphabet except for X, V, and N. She often calls X K, V Y and N Z. She can identify several lower case letters now and knows basically all of her letter sounds. She's still pretty much stuck at 13 in the counting department, but if you get her past 13 and break the 13, 7-13, 7-13 cycle she can sometimes get to 20.

Potty training is still pretty much holding steady. We've had no major breakthroughs lately. She definitely gets great joy out of picking out her big girl underwear each day and gets very excited each time we check them and they are dry.

Obedience is currently a hot topic in the Spontak household. As Hannah grows more and more independent she becomes ever more willful. She will push the limits on the same issue dozens of times a day even if it means getting multiple time outs in a row! There are days when I feel like she spends ALL day in time out. Hitting is another unruly behavior that has reared it's ugly head and I am none too pleased with it. It seems like whenever she gets frustrated, bored, or the whim just strikes her she will haul off and hit us. She gets time outs for this so often that many times when asked why she got a time out she will default answer for hitting even if that's not why she was in time out! Time outs or a stern "NO!" don't seem to be making much difference. I am hoping that this is a phase that she will soon grow out of because it is really trying my patience.

Physically she can now jump and get both feet off the ground all the time, but she still hasn't grasped the concept of jumping off of things yet which is actually good in my opinion! She climbs like a crazy woman. She goes up ladders, steps, cargo netting, rock walls, etc. She can sit by herself in big kid swings and go down pretty much any slide by herself. She's working on walking on the balance beam by herself and is very motivated to learn how to do it. She can really run now (not just a fast walk) and loves to do it any chance she gets. She can usually walk up and down steps alone as long as she has a railing or something else to hold onto and she is starting to want to go up and down without holding onto anything which makes me nervous.

Some people have asked me what Hannah wants for her birthday. She doesn't NEED anything really except for some clothes for the next season, but when I said last year that she didn't need gifts I had people asking me anyway for ideas. So, here are some ideas if you feel like you really want to get her a gift. She's currently wearing size 3T and 4T dresses and shirts. For pants she needs size 3T, preferably elastic waist without zippers or buttons that she can pull up and down herself for easy potty training! For shorts she needs 2T or 3T. If you want to get ahead for the fall, she could really use some 3T (or to be safer 4T) long sleeve shirts, light weight jackets and sweaters or sweatshirts. She's currently wearing size 8 shoes. She doesn't have any sandals or dress shoes that fit. She could also use size 4T/5T ( I think they only come in two size increments and the size she is wearing now is 2T/3T) big girl underwear because some of the pairs she has now are already getting tight. Socks for shoe size 8 or bigger would be great because she has very few pairs that still fit (thank heavens it's almost summer and hopefully I can get her into some sandals soon!). I'm always looking for cute hair bows and clips to tame her wild hair. I love the curly ones from Gymboree(she wearing ones from there in almost every picture in this post!). They work great in her hair because they seem to be just the right size/stretchiness.

Besides clothes she LOVES books. She can read books with regular paper pages just fine now and rarely (if ever) tears pages anymore, but board books are still fine too. New alphabet and counting books are always big hits. Those seem to be her favorites from the library these days. Also, any books about adoption would be good. Some of the best ones I've found from the library are Megan's Birthday Tree by Laurie Lears, The Red Thread, An Adoption Fairytale by Grace Lin, Over the Moon by Karen Katz, and A Mother for Choco by Keiko Kasza. She likes all of these books and I feel they portray adoption in a realistic or favorable light. I would say her favorite of all of these (and the only one I've ever seen in a bookstore, I kicked myself for not buying it then, but I didn't know she would like it so much!) is A Mother for Choco. Other favorite books that we have checked out from the library recently that we don't have are DW Flips, I Love You Stinky Face, Hop on Pop, and DK My First Phonics Board Book.
As far as other interests go, she loves animals, puzzles (she could stand to have some new ones since she's completely mastered the 3 she has), Diego, anything Sesame Street,-especially Grover, The Backyardigans, Fisher Price Little People toys (she has the barn, ark, and A-Z Learning Zoo) the computer (we've thought about getting her the Leap Frog Click Start My First Computer, but it's kinda expensive), swing sets, toy kitchens/food, art supplies (stickers, stamps, scissors, etc) and anything that teaches numbers or letters. She is NOT very into stuffed animals or dolls.
I think that is all the updates I have for now. I'll try to get some more videos uploaded as soon as I can.

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