Signing

Sasha has mostly stopped with her baby sign language. She does still sign stuff occasionally, but not very much.
It's understandable. Sasha is smart enough to notice that the rest of the world talks, not signs. So why bother? She figured that out long ago, so she rarely signed when we were out of the house or for strangers. Signing was mostly a thing that mommy did with her. My husband and older daughter did put effort into signing and learning the signs that Sasha knew, but Sasha knows it was mostly something mom encouraged and pushed. She'd sign for me and I'd cheer her on and it made me happy.
But if the rest of the world talks, that's where she's putting her efforts.

I am rethinking whether to continue to teach it to her as a second language. Originally it's intent was for her to be able to communicate with us while she was still learning how to talk. Her verbal vocabulary has surpassed her signing vocabulary now. So we shall see!

She's got some signs she still uses. Like "where?" and "more" and "bike". Especially "where?". That sign has become a fun little game for her. She likes to throw, drop, or hide objects then turn to us and ask us "where?". When we find it and give it to her, she hides it again and signs "where?" again. She can keep this up all day if we can keep up with her.

Just yesterday, Sasha was in her car seat and unbeknownst to us, she kicked off a shoe. I took her out of the car seat and started walking up to the house. She said "where?" and signed it at the same time. My husband and I remarked that we thought she was looking for Cassie and we continued upstairs. After we got upstairs, I set her down and noticed her shoe was missing.
"Oh no! Where is her shoe?", I said. Sasha chimed in by saying "where?" and signing "where?" again. We finally realized that when she originally said "where?", she was talking about her shoe. Oops! My husband had to run back down to the car to get her shoe.

I Don't Know!

Sasha's first official sentence is "I don't know". She started saying this repeatedly at the mall yesterday. It sounds like "I no no! I no no!" and is the answer to most any question you ask her now.

If you ask her if something is funny, she will laugh her head off like you said something hilarious. She knows that funny means laugh.

Other new words this week are "Grandma" and "high chair". Grandma sounds like "da ma" and high chair is said very clearly.

When she wants me to count, she will say "two three". When she wants me to sing her the alphabet, she says "bc", and she makes random hand gestures pretending like she's signing the alphabet but she's pretty close to some real letters in her gestures.

Children's Museum

The day after the playdate, most of the mommies and kids met up at a Children's museum. It was much fun and the kids had a blast!

More Playdate Pics

Another mother at the playdate is photographically talented and took these pics at the playdate.

Pretending to eat some food, but mostly just sitting with the other little ones:

And some "bad hair day" shots but cute anyways:


Love the photography skills she has. These are great pics!

Playing with babies

We went on a playdate this weekend, with a bunch of other little ones all Sasha's age and had a blast!
My camera battery died so I didn't get any pictures, but fortunately one of the other moms shared her pictures with me. Here are a few.

Group shots of the kids:

Playing with bubbles!


We had a lot of fun. Sasha enjoyed playing with the slide and even a toy roller coaster. One of the little boys tried to give her a hug but accidentally knocked her off the roller coaster toy instead and she cried.

Knitting herself a sweater

I guess she's seen me knitting her sweaters enough. She thought she'd help me out a bit with them!
They say imitation is the best form of flattery.
I did finish knitting this sweater yesterday and it is really cute. I just need to put some buttons on it. Yesterday I finally got the buttons on that other sweater that I knit for Sasha. So I'll have to get some pictures up.

While we're talking about knitting, here's a pair of socks I knit for Sasha. My little model was crabby when I wanted to take a picture of her wearing her new handmade socks:

Fever

On Sunday afternoon, everything seemed to be going as usual for a day off. My husband and Sasha took a nap together. I didn't want Sasha napping for longer than an hour or two so that she didn't ruin her sleep schedule. After one hour had elapsed after she fell asleep, I tried to wake her up, but she was very groggy and difficult to wake. So I let her nap another half hour and tried again. She was still groggy and wouldn't wake up so I tried again another half hour later. After the two hour mark, I was determined to wake her. I sort of got her awake and walking around but she stayed awake for about 5 minutes and layed back down and fell asleep right in the middle of the living room floor. I kept pestering and harassing her but she just wouldn't wake up.
More hours passed by and I was starting to get concerned. She just wasn't waking. My husband picked her up and remarked that she felt hot. I touched her and she sure was. She was hot and crabby and tired. We fought with her to take her temperature and it was 101.0F degrees. Poor baby.
We had to fight with her again to give her some baby tylenol. She was a poor miserable little creature. You could tell by looking in her eyes that she felt miserable and my heart really felt for her. She was very inactive, not at all like her usual self. She just sat or flopped wherever she was and watched tv or whatever was in her view.
Eventually the baby tylenol kicked in and she started feeling better. On Monday she was still somewhat ill, but not as ill as she was on Sunday. By the end of the day on Monday, she seemed back to her old self.
Other than the tiredness and fever, there really weren't any other cold or flu symptoms. No gastrointestinal upset, nothing else that I can tell. The only thing I can think of is that maybe it was related to her new teeth.

First New Canine Tooth

Sorry I haven't updated in a while!
Sasha has been getting her four canine teeth. Her top left just erupted through, and her bottom left looks imminent. Her top right is definitely swollen and I can feel a bump on her bottom right.
Checking her teeth can be a challenge. Little girl can bite!. But if we need her to open her mouth to see anything inside, all we have to do is ask her "Sasha, where are you blueberries?". She will proudly open her mouth widely and point inside. This is from one day when I handed her a handful of blueberries. I turned my back on her for a few seconds and when I turned back they were all gone. I thought it was too quick for her to have eaten them so fast so I asked her where her blueberries went. This is when she opened her mouth widely and pointed inside. She ate them all! And now whenever we ask her where those blueberries went (or any other food she has just consumed), she will gladly tell us where they went.
All these new teeth have made little girl miserable at times. She is whiny and more irritable.

Blue Jean Cutie

Most kids I know at this age love getting their pictures taken. At this age, Cassie was a total ham the moment she saw a camera in your hand. When Sasha sees a camera, she runs away.
We got her a cute blue jean outfit complete with hat and she looked adorable in it if I do say so myself. I tried to get her picture and she kept running away. She finally sat still enough to let me take her picture. I got a few but this one turned out the best. It's now one of my favorite pictures.

Fondue and Ducks

We felt like going out to eat for dinner but we couldn't quite agree on where to go. I had seen a fondue restauraunt and thought it sounded like a good idea. Sasha is in a stage where she loves dipping her food so it sounded brilliant. Yeah, it wasn't. Right as we walked into the restauraunt, I noticed a sign that indicated a dress code suggesting suit jackets for men and discouraging (but not disallowing) jeans. Bad sign right away. Not a good idea to go to some fancy schmancy restauraunt with an 18 month old.
The tables had stoves built right in the middle of the tabletops. As my husband put Sasha into her high chair, he noticed right away that the control knob for the stovetop was right at her spot. Unfortunately Sasha made this discovery also and she would not leave her hands off the knob. We had to move her high chair away from the table and that made her very antsy. The menu looked delicious but it was very very expensive. I wasn't quite prepared for the sticker shock.
Sasha started throwing a temper tantrum and had a meltdown because she could not reach the table or play with the stovetop knob. We had to abort the whole dinner. I felt bad leaving the restauraunt without dining. The waiter was very friendly and helpful. But I wanted to leave before Sasha disrupted the dining experience for the whole restauraunt. It looked like it was going to come out to a $200 meal anyways! Yikes.

We went to kid-friendly McDonald's for dinner and that worked out much better anyways. Sasha loved her chicken nuggets.

After dinner, we went to a Barnes and Noble bookstore. Sasha made a new friend, as usual. This time, she had a blast with a girl who appeared to be about 3 years old. Sasha was copying all the girls movements. She ran when the girl ran, tried to jump when the girl jumped, and sat and read books when the girl sat and read books. It was very cute.
As usual, Sasha got a lot of complements from random strangers at the bookstore. "Oh she's soooooo cute!" people would exclaim. And the people in this area are cold and self-absorbed and usually ignore everyone, including cute little kids, so I guess that says a lot.
Sasha started getting tired and cranky at her usual bedtime. As we neared the registers of the store, Sasha started having a melt down. I had to have my husband check out the books solo while I had to take Sasha out of the store so the patrons wouldn't be subjected to toddler screams.

Immediately upon exiting the store, we noticed a pair of ducks. A male and a female were wandering around the entrance area, picking through the landscaped wood chips for food. I pointed the ducks out to my fussy little toddler and she immediately perked up. I set her down on the sidewalk and she followed the ducks around. She pointed at the ducks, repeatedly said "Duck! Duck!", and quacked at them. They were very tame. They didn't fly away at all. They seemed undisturbed by us, and didn't care that a toddler was following them around pointing and quacking at them. It was very cute. We let Sasha follow the ducks around for a while and once the ducks headed for the street, we had to pick her up and take her to the car despite her heavy protests. The ducks were a cute end to the day.

Those darned Blinky shoes

I took Sasha to her weekly playtime at our local school district. There are usually many young children, but this week there were only two other kids at the program. One child was a 22 month old japanese boy. The other child was a 2.5 year old cute little Indian girl with pigtails.
The boy had blinky shoes on! Once Sasha noticed his shoes, she was his personal shadow. She followed him around, pointing and staring at his feet. If he stopped walking, his shoes would stop blinking, so she'd push him to make him walk. This upset him several times. I had to explain to his mother that Sasha was fascinated by his shoes, not trying to be a brute.