Fun Things!

I realize it's been awhile since I have posted about all the fun new things Paprika has learned and what she's saying now.

Paprika can look at different shapes and call them by their proper name: triangle, square, circle. She recognizes the shapes in all sorts of different places and out in public she will say, "That's a blue triangle!"

Paprika is starting to say more complex sentences. For example, she will say "Let's go downstairs and watch Barney!" or "Time to go! Let's go see people! And babies! And cars!" or "Let's go eat a bagel and play with toys!" or "That's a rainbow! A rainbow has colors." One of her favorite things to say is, "That's a BIG truck." She usually narrates the whole car ride with: "That's a car. That's a bus. That's a car. That's a car. That's a BIG truck."

I can hear her on the monitor every morning before I wake up. She talks to herself non-stop and points out everything in her room. "That's a blue flower. That's a pink flower. That's Snow White. That's 'Rella (Cinderella). That's Ariel. That's Baby Brains (a book we have). That's Pooh. That's fish. That's a light. Where's Baby Bop? There's Baby Bop!" She can talk to herself for a LONG time like this- probably hours if I'd let her. When she gets bored pointing out everything in her room, she starts singing and sings things like, "Baby baby, ahhhhh! Baby, ahhhhh!"

Most words she says very clearly, for example: "Cookie Monster" or "Dinosaur" or "Rainbow." A few words she has her own way of saying, for example, for "and" she says "et" and for "open" she still says "abit". She's very consistent with how she says those words so we know what she's saying. For "mommy's lap" she says "mommy's slop!" It took me forever to figure out what she was saying- I would always ask, "Paprika, what's mommy's slop?!"

Paprika knows most of the letters of the alphabet because of the alphabet song, and is able to match many of the alphabet shapes to the words. She's more sure about some letters than others, but the list of the ones she knows for sure is growing longer by the day. Right now I know she knows A, B, C, D, F, G, H, M, N, O, P, R, T, Y and Z. As far as singing the alphabet song, she sings, "A,B,C,F,G,H,I,J...and then it gets a little jumbled from there...Y,X,Z,now I know my, now I know my, etc." Her counting is getting better. She used to always say, "One, two, SIX!" but now she says "One, two, three" and today I caught her counting to eleven unassisted getting most of the numbers right.

Paprika knows some colors. She knows orange, yellow, purple, blue, pink, gold, and silver. She can point out a blue fish, a pink fish, etc. I'm not sure what other colors she knows. Sometimes she makes lucky guesses.

She loves reading to herself and for a long time now has not allowed me to read to her at night. She reads all the books and I just listen. We read for about an hour before bed each night, and then throughout the day in little spurts. Her favorite book to "read" to me is "Oh The Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss. She has the whole book memorized and says all the right things in the right places. But instead of calling it "Oh The Places You'll Go," she calls it "Oh, Peepees Go!" When she gets to the scary parts of the book, she gets really animated and says "Bump! Slump! All alone!" - she says it very omninously, which is a riot because she's sooo serious and consistent in her tone. She reads me a lot of other books, too, and makes up her own story to the book when she doesn't already have the book memorized. Usually it only takes one or two times of me reading the book to her for her to memorize it, more or less.

Yesterday, she discovered how much fun it is to splash water everywhere in the bathtub and we both got drenched. It was hilarious, and we were both laughing so hard. I think I may be in for a soaking at all baths from now on. I don't mind one bit.

So, that's the state of the Paprika address as we sit here at the beginning of her 21st month. She is a joy and makes life so wonderful and exciting every day. I feel like the luckiest person in the world, and I am enjoying the best days of life I have ever known.