Stuff and things

Hey there! Boy have I been MIA! I still have to download our pics, but in the mean time I wanted to just pop on here and say that Ayana's language skills are exploding at the moment! She is talking ALL of the time now! She is using words to communicate now, like instead of just tapping my arm to get my attention she taps AND says "Mama?" which, quite frankly, makes my heart melt into a million pieces. This is very NEW. Literally in the last week. She is putting words together, "Mama? Downtairs? Peese?" It's very easy to give her anything she wants because we have been waiting SO LONG to hear her talk like this! Her other favourite is "all done", she has discovered the immense power of "all done" and "peese" or "more". She'll point to, for eg, the portable radio and say "more" so Oma will turn it on. Then immediately after she then says, "all done" and we turn it off, to which she replies, "peese? more?" and on and on. It didn't take me long to figure out she was just discovering how she can make grownups do stuff for her! So funny! Where it gets tricky is when she says "all done" to something YOU are doing that she doesn't like or want to be involved in. We have had quite the tantrums over this scenario! We have resorted, with humour to survive mainly, to saying, "You're not the boss of me!" And it makes us all laugh and we then feel better amid the EAR PIERCING screaming. I mean she can SCREAM. This is the kind of crying/screaming that literally absolutely makes you go deaf. I have never heard anything like it in my life ever!

The other HUGE milestone is she suddenly decided when we were in Edmonton last weekend that she no longer wants the bottle. Thaaaat's right. No bottle, no how. Don't want it. Don't ask me about it. It's over, Mom. It still boggles my mind what happened. In Edmo we used the 1% milk that his mom had, just because there's no point in buying homo for the 2 days we are there, and eventhough she has had it before, I wonder if because it tasted different is why she refused. Not sure. On the one hand I am THRILLED that I don't have to deal with the dilema of taking the bottle away at some point. But on the other hand I am very sad as that was the last remnant of babyhood and nice bonding time we had twice a day. But we still read books before bed, and that's still good.

I have noticed with myself that eventhough I am very attached to her and bonded, that without her calling me specifically "mama" I still felt frustrated and not that she knew me as her "mother". I felt like her mother, and obviously acted like her mother, but I wasn't sure if she really knew me as the special mommy, you know? I know she did in my heart, but at almost 22 months and her still not looking at me in the eye and purposefully saying, "mama" I was sad about that. I would get the pat on my arm or leg or arms up. Anyway, the first time she patted my arm and said, "mama?" in a questioning adorable way, I just about burst into tears. I am now officially her, "Mama." Done. Signed, sealed and delivered. She has decided in her toddler mind that I have passed and we are now "mama" and "ayana" forever. Swoon!

She also does the same for "Dada". He is definately "Dada" and that is very exciting. We are still working on "Ellie" that word seems to be harder for her. She also is pointing at stuff all of the time and either naming it correctly out of the blue like "arm", or "door", like she has had the word in her head all of these months and just needed the confidence to say it. And most often she will at least give it a try. She also completely understands "Hot" and "cold" and one of her favourite things to do is to touch stuff that's hot and cold and say if it is either and 100% of the time she is right on.

Christmas was totally fun, and Ayana completely caught on to present opening. New Years eve was nice too, just the 4 of us. Ellie starts back in school tomorrow and Regan is operating at the "Women in the Directors Chair" the last 2 weeks in January and will be in Banff the entire time. Lucky duck.

Life is generally very very great around here! And the weather has FINALLY warmed up and we are enjoying lovely chinooks almost every day! But we still have the most snow we have had since 1924!

Have a great day!