Our Little Girl

Alyse is looking and acting more and more like a little girl and less like a baby. Just the other day, I noticed that most of the rolls in her arms (and she had a lot!) are going away! Don't worry, she still has lots of chub to spare, and her cheeks (and belly) are still very kissable, but she is definitely growing up.





She is able to follow directions really well and almost always knows what we're saying to her, and she's saying a lot of words herself too. Her latest ones are flower, water, and balloon. I'd say her favorite words are still car and baby, although she's figuring out that if she says please she's more likely to get something :) She always says bye-bye and waves, but it's usually after someone has left! She started saying bye-bye when we put something away (that's what I've done for a long time to help her not get upset when we clean up or are all done with something) and the other day she looked at me when I was in her room and told me "bye-bye" because she wanted to play by herself!
This is one of her favorite friends, Lilah. Alyse says Lilah's name at least a few times every day and she just loves to play with her (aka watch her play since Lilah is over two years old and does all this imaginary play that Alyse loves to watch and then try to imitate.)




She also likes helping with things, so I've tried to "make up" some ways she can be helpful. When she's done eating, sometimes I hand her the broom and she "sweeps" from her seat in her highchair. After we get home from shopping at the produce store (the one we walk to, so everything is loaded up in our stroller), I ask her to grab stuff out of the stroller and bring it to the fridge or our fruit baskets. The other day I was cooking and she was just hanging on my leg and whining, so I got a kitchen chair, had her stand on it at the counter, and "help me" cook by holding a can of something I was going to use earlier. She was so contented that I got everything finished without her whining at all!
"Helping" with a pile of papers


One thing she isn't improving on that much is walking. We actually had an early intervention team come evaluate her, and they confirmed what we thought: she's slightly delayed in her gross motor skills, but not so much that she needs in home interventions. She's taken a handful of steps at various times over the last month, but she doesn't want to/can't consistently stay up on her own two feet. When you hold one of her hands she will stand up and walk anywhere, but as soon as you wriggle your finger out of her grip, she goes down to her knees. My mom and Scott came to visit (pics coming in the next post!) and they decided to buy her a shopping cart after seeing her use the one in our tot lot...it is her favorite toy and she stands up and walks with it all day long! So, hopefully she will make more progress soon...I'm just so excited to be able to take her places, like the playground, and have her be upright on her own vs. me having to hold her hand...although, I'll probably still hold her hand sometimes :)