Our 19-20 Month Old

I am SO far behind on this blog, it’s not even funny!!!!!  Ashilene turned 20 months yesterday and I still haven’t blogged about her 19th month, so I will just do the best I can to sum up the past two months before I get even more behind!  Ashilene has been fascinated with babies lately.  She adores the baby doll that Great Grandpa Ken and Great Grandma Ardie gave her for Christmas.  She absolutely loves baby Daniel DeReis, who joined our ward family in November.  We went to the new Japanese buffet (which I highly recommend) by the movie theatre in Hayward on New Year’s Eve day with Baby Daniel and his parents, Melanie and Paul.  Ashilene absolutely loved looking at and talking to Baby Daniel and pointing at him and saying “Baby!  Baby!”

Here is a video of her pointing at his baby announcement on our fridge and excitedly saying, “Baby!  Baby!”

Ashilene continues to love being Mommy’s helper.  Here she is helping Mommy make Spice Cookies to deliver to our neighbors.

She likes to push the big cart all by herself.

She would love to be able to use the keys to open the front door all by herself.

She loves carrying bags and purses.  I put a bunch of old credit/gift cards in one of my old purses in an effort to keep her out of my current purse and credit cards.  She loves walking around the house with that purse and sorting through the cards.

I am thrilled with Ashilene’s love of music.  She often tries to sing along with the hymns at church, the songs on her Signing Time DVDs, music on the radio, etc.  I think my favorite though is when I catch her trying to sing the “ABC Song”.  One of these days I’ll successfully catch that on video . . . She still loves trying to play the piano with Mommy and other musical instruments like the Triangle

 

Cymbals

And the cute Xylophone that her cousin, Jonah, gave her for Christmas!

She also loves playing with the shopping cart, play food, puzzles and other fun toys she received for Christmas.

Ashilene loves drawing.

She was thrilled when she received her own little table and chairs from Santa!

She loves coloring pictures to send to her Uncle Chris who is serving a mission in Salt Lake City right now.

As sweet as our precious Ashilene is, she is also marching steadily towards the terrible twos as she has increasing temper tantrums and loves to test Mommy and Daddy’s limits sometimes.  She has already mastered a defiant teenager stare and can give it to you without flinching for what feels like forever.  It’s so hard because it is absolutely hilarious to see this defiant teenager stare on a little one and a half year old face and I can never manage to keep a straight face when she gives it to me, nor have I managed to capture it on camera.  She loves to play on Mommy and Daddy’s computers, steal our cell phones and Ipods and will climb up into our chairs the second we get up to go get something.  She also has her mischievous moments like the time when it got too quiet and we walked around the corner to dicover this . . .

Her vocabulary has been increasing rapidly.  She does the signs with a lot of the words she says, which definitely makes it easier for us to understand what she is saying.  Some of the words she says now include: eat, cracker, water (wah-wah), cereal, milk (melwk), banana (dibadiba), apple, pear, carrot, all done (all duck), Mom (mama), Dad (dada), Grandma & Grandpa (papa), more, hurt, shoe, sock, hat, coat, car, bike, ball, doll, bubbles, wash hands, brush teeth, sleep, bath, book, blankie, day, outside, wind, rain, sun, cloud, tree, flower, star, moon, stop, go, up, down, friend, play, happy, laugh, sad, cry, hot, cold, warm, yes, no, you, me, name, bye bye, walk, run, march, jump, freeze and sorry (although she usually only says that one under duress).  In addition to saying and/or signing their names she can make a lot of the sounds that these animals make: bird, fish, cat, dog, frog, cow, donkey, bear, bug.  Some of her very favorites are: horse (Neigh!), sheep (Bah!!!) and lion (Roar!!!!!!)  She’s also good at identifying body parts like eyes, nose, ears and mouth.  Here she is pointing out the nose on her Baby.

She’s also pretty good at please and thank you.  She loves to use please to get things.  Here she is saying and signing “Please” to get me to open up the baby-locked pantry and give her some fruit snacks.  How can I say “no” to that adorably polite request?;)

Her cousin, Jonah, taught her how to say, “Mine” at our Miller Family Christmas Dinner.  Thankfully she doesn’t say it as often now as she did that first night when she kept saying it over and over.  It was super cute then, but would’ve become old real fast!

  

Ashilene still loves to climb.  Here she is having fun on a table she climbed up on while we were baby-sitting her cousin, Jonah.

And I simply must post this insanely adorable picture of her cousin, Jonah, trying to “shave” with a child-safe cheese slicer!

Ashilene’s newest acquired physical skill is jumping/hopping.  Here she is still in the learning stages around Christmas time . . .

We just love our 20 month old!