May Updates

Whew! May was such a busy month! I have not had the energy to use what little time I've had recently to update the blog. Life is moving back to it's normal routine again-- at least for now so I will attempt to get caught up.

I think I'll start out with some Hannah news first and them move onto family life news. (I won't get to that tonight-- but I know everyone who visits here really comes just to see pictures of Hannah anyway. :)

Hannah is now a full fledged toddler. She is full of movement, exploration, intense curiosity, spontaneous affection, self discovery, assertiveness . . . she soaks up language like a sponge and constantly amazes me with her insatiable capacity to learn and experience life to the fullest.

Here she is delighted at playing in a warm late spring rain. She stayed out in it for at least 15 minutes before she decided to come back inside! She walked all around the patio touching different plants, stood with her mouth wide open trying to taste the rain, and clapped and bounced in happiness!

I try and give Hannah as many sensory and art experiences as we can fit into one week. She usually plays with water and sand every day that we are home all day-- sometimes I mix the water up with cornstarch or give her some cold spaghetti noodles to play with instead just for variety! She loves to explore all these activities to the fullest! No longer content to just play with the water with her hands she has to get in it!

In May I introduced finger painting and painting with a brush! What at little artist!


Of course just being outside is a sensory experience in itself-- there's mulch and dirt, leaves and wind, bird song and bugs to wonder at and explore.

Play dough has brought Hannah a lot of fun-- scraping, poking, and especially squeezing the play dough as well as tearing it into pieces are all ways she explores with it so far. Recently I've been giving her sticks to poke in it and this she does with great concentration and purpose. Below is Hannah's first play dough experience-- of course it involved a taste test.

May also brought about changes in Hannah's diet. She is finally showing more interest in finger foods and the food that adults eat! This in large part is due to Corban's influence. (More to come on that later.) Here is Hannah's first chips and salsa! Yum, Yum!
Hannah's growing desire and capacity to pretend is a source of great delight and fun for me. She loves to mimic all kinds of our daily activities and pretends/mimics talking on the phone, cooking, combing hair, taking a bath, feeding her baby dolls and stuffed animals, and cleaning. She just recently started "playing dress up". I will definitely be posting some pictures of that in the near future as it is too cute! :)

Below Hannah talks on the phone just like Mamma! She says "Hello!" everytime she puts a phone (or remote control) to her ear.

That's all I have in me for tonight! I'll be back with more hopefully Friday!