A Little Bit of Emily

At 20.5 months, this girl is growing up so fast!

She loves loves loves letters. She has a few favorites that she finds on everything and everywhere. E, I, O, and C are the leading contenders, but she knows probably 40% of the alphabet. Maybe more. We also fill pieces of paper daily with letters. She points to a spot, says a letter, we write the letter. Repeat repeat repeat.  Last week I found magnetic letters at the dollar store and picked them up. She knocks them off the fridge and the puts them on one by one, saying and signing the letter with me.  She also loves playing with the bananagrams tiles and finding her favorite letters and learning some new ones.

She loves wearing that dress, usually over her clothes like in the above picture. She can put it on almost by herself. She doesn’t really have the hang of dressing herself at all, but she can put on my shirts and her dresses that have large openings for her head and space to get her arms through.

She’s been doing this for months, but when she backs up or she backs up her toys or a letter she says, “beep beep beep” just like the garbage truck.  As soon as she hears the beeping of a truck she runs to the window to try and find it. She asks “where is it” (signing where) until we can locate it or I can change the subject if it doesn’t appear.

Her favorite questions are “where is it” (signs where), “where is it going/where did it go” (signs where and says go at the same time), and “where could it be” (signs where and says be at the same time). When we sing “If you chance to meet a frown, do not let it stay, quickly turn it upside down and smile that frown away” she gets hung up on the second phrase asking over and over where the frown went. Turning into a smile is not a great answer in her mind.

We were singing “Follow the Prophet” a few weeks ago with her and she asked where the prophet was going.  The answer that came to my mind is he is going to Jesus and he wants us to follow him to Jesus. It was a really sweet moment for me. I’m grateful for Emily’s questions and all that they teach me.

For months and months and months Emily has understood and executed the rule that you only right on paper perfectly. We have pens and pencils all over our house with notebooks and paper for Emily to write with whenever she feels so inclined. In the last week or two however, I have begun noticing some artistic works in random places: the toilet seat, the tray of her booster seat, on the coffee table Andrew made, and on our kitchen table. For a girl that likes to stick very close to me and keep me involved in all her activities, I have no idea when she sneaks time in for these secret missions.

She is the most fabulous bug detector. She finds all the ants in spiders in our home and insists that we immediately clean them off. She says, “oh, oh, oh, oh” getting louder and louder and louder until we spot the creature she is concerned about. Then she signs clean very emphatically. This repeats until the deed is done. I’ve been working really hard at convincing her that if the bug is outside our house, even if it is on the screen of the window, we can leave it alone.

Emily is big on owies and moles right now. She identifies all owies by saying the word and signing hurt. If she has one on her arm she will look at her other arm and both Andrew and my arm, checking for owies and saying “noooooo” for each clean bill of health. She points out anything that resembles an owie on each of us. She identifies all freckles and moles as “mole”, which she points to and states. I’m always surprised when she pulls this one out of her pocket; we were on a walk on Saturday and she stops in her tracks to touch a freckle on my toe and exclaims, “Mole!”.

It has been raining every day for the last six days – lots of thunder and lightening.  I guess I’ve been saying “Oh Boy!” when there is a loud clap of thunder because recently Emily has been saying and signing “boy” when she hears thunder. The she asks were he is or where did he go?

I’ve been pushing Emily’s bedtime back to 7 (instead of 6 or 6:30) after a few mornings of her waking up at 5:30 and 6am. Last night she sung/talked in her bed for almost an hour before she fell asleep – mostly the b sound from what I heard. This morning I still hadn’t heard her crying after 8am so I went upstairs and listened at her door for a long time.  She was singing a song about temples. I heard her say temple over and over and over again during her chatting/singing.  Part of the time she was saying “me see temple”. I heard mommy once or twice.  When I finally opened the door she welcomed me with an enthusiastic, “HI!”. I like this much better than getting her crying after naps and in the morning, which is how she has always woken up.

Emily has a best friend that she is constantly asking to play with. First thing in the morning, at breakfast, as soon as she wakes up from her nap, and as she goes to sleep are all times when she asks for her friend. Most of the time they got along really well together, so it is fun to watch them play and interact.  When we don’t see her for a couple of days, or even a week, she still asks and talks about this friend constantly. I’m going to be very sad when they move in a few months; I fear it is going to take a long time before she will stop asking for her multiple times a day.