17 Months Old & Kindermusik

Rebecca is 17 months old today! Hard to believe she's almost 1 1/2. Rebecca is learning so much every day. She is getting much faster at counting. She used to pause between each number. But last night she spouted off 1-6 like nothing. She is also getting better and better with her letters. She knows pretty much the whole alphabet. She just needs a little prompting here and there. We're working on one letter each week. So far her favorite is B. She thinks every word starts with the letter B :) She loves to sing the alphabet...ending with "wi me!." Rebecca is doing more independent play, like reading. She'll sit and read through books by herself for a while. We just realized the other day that she's been singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" for a while now. She actually sings almost the whole thing by herself. We sing every night before bed, and Rebecca requests whatever she's in the mood for. If you start singing something else she'll continually ask for another song until you start the new one :) Her favorite right now is "Climb, climb up sunshine mountain,..." She asks for "cimb." And then she chimes in with "turn." She likes the song about Zacchaeus. She calls it "tree." "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands" is "wowld." And she'll request specific verses...usually "He's got grandpa and grandma..." "Jesus Loves the Little Children" is "white." "Deep and Wide" is still a favorite. And so is "Rock-a-bye Baby"..."wock by baby...tee top...bwows...fall...baby...all" And "Jesus Loves Me"..."Jesus...for...bible...loves me."

She is still showing signs of lots of logical thinking. The other day she was trying to push her stroller. And figured out that it's much easier to just carry the stroller instead of bumping into things all the time :)

Rebecca is still teething like crazy. It's rare to see her without her hands or a toy in her mouth. But the teeth are getting through. And she's sleeping well now...some mornings sleeping until 8 instead of being up at 5:30 :P She has skipped her morning nap for about a week and a half now. Not sure if we're totally done with it yet, but she's definitely in the process of phasing it out and just taking one long afternoon nap (about 1:15-4pm most days).

Rebecca is starting to show some early signs of potty training readinesss (although it will probably be a while yet). Lately if her diaper is really wet she starts pulling on her pants. And sometimes she'll say "all wet" or "potty."

She is really thinning out lately. Her Halloween costume from last year still fits. And it's 6-12m! The pants were snug last Oct. But she can still get into them now.

Rebecca got her first dose of the flu shot yesterday. As with any shot she was not too happy about it. But she settled down right away and hasn't seemed to notice it since then. She'll get the other dose at her 18m check up next month.

Yesterday was our first time at Kindermusik. Rebecca loved it!! She is in the Our Time class for 1 1/2-3 year olds. So she's kind of young...the youngest there. But she still did well. It was obvious to everyone from the moment we started that she loves music :) We thought she might be kind of shy at first, but not at all! As soon as we got in the room Rebecca wanted the whole bucket of wood blocks. And she wanted to collect them from the other kids too (she's in a gathering phase). Then when class started all of the kids sat with their mom or dad to sing and do motions and play instruments. But not Rebecca. She wanted nothing to do with sitting on Mommy's lap. She wanted to dance! Most of the class she was up dancing around the circle, pausing once in a while in front of someone, then on with the dancing again. Periodically Mary could get her to sit down and attempt to do the activity. But after a few moments Rebecca wanted to be up again. She just loved the music so much...and being the center of attention :P When it was time for a story and Miss Lynette set out the blanket all of the kids sat down on it. Rebecca...she laid down and said "night night." And then she got back up and went over to the teacher and stood right by her, expecting to get to sit in her lap like she does when we read at home :) The teacher is great. She actually has similar mannerisms and looks quite a bit like Grandma Voogt! So Rebecca seemed to be very comfortable with her right from the start. As expected Rebecca didn't really interact with the other kids. But she was in her glory with all the music and clapping and dancing. She was definitely tired out by the end. It'll be fun to do this every week and to get to know the other moms (and dad:) and kids. There wasn't really a way to take pictures during class. But we got a couple just outside of class afterwards and a few at home with our goodies. We got a pack of stuff to take home...instrument, book, CDs and activity book (for parents). Rebecca has already devoured the new book...she's read it at least 30-40 times already. And she talks about P. J. (the book is called Pete and P. J.) all the time. We've been listening to the CDs already. She'll know all the music by next week :) And hopefully Mommy can study and learn the words to the songs too ;)

Tomorrow we're going to a MOPS openhouse to register and meet some people. We're looking forward to that and to the start of regular MOPS meetings in Oct.