Riding on the train at the Toronto Railway Museum!

week 92 / 21 months, 1 weeks old:

•  June 29:  I have been wearing a T-shirt around the house that was from my time bungy jumping in New Zealand (not sure why I never blogged about that significant bucket list item).  Bb has been interested in the letters on the T-shirt and asked me to point them out to me (B, U, N, G, Y, K, A, R, W, and the words “jumper” and “bridge”).  Bb can recognize and say the letter “W”.  She repeatedly asked me to crouch down to her level so that she could point to the letters and have me read them to her.  This is so fascinating that she asked to do this on her own.  We really need to get some alphabet magnet toys for her to play with.
• I’ve been paying attention to “Stories of Play” and “Little play nest” on Instagram.  They advocate learning through play and play in general for toddlers and little kids.  They advocate letting the child learn through play and not pushing them to learn academic subjects too young.  It’s cool that bb shows an interest in letters even though I never pushed that topic on to her.
• It’s interesting that we have so many books on her bookshelf and she can remember and identify nearly all of them by the spine.  We don’t have one of those fancy aesthetic bookshelves which show all the books on varying levels which show the cover.  We just used one of my old white three-level bookshelves that I had as a child for her books.  It works well with her to keep all of her books tidy.  Still amazed that she can pick out the book that she wants to read just from looking at the spine.
• Her favourite book this week is the “I am Human” book.  She likes to point out the old lady on the page where there are dozens of tiny faces.
• She continues to like to sing songs.  She can sing the first verse of “Twinkle twinkle little star” and the “up above” part well.  Also she can pronounce “Happy birthday” better than before.
• I want to capture these little preliminary speech nuances but again haven’t been videoing her enough to do so.  It’s bittersweet when I notice that she’s improved on pronouncing something because her beginning-to-talk era is slowly fading as she picks up the sounds better and loses the baby speech.
• Bb liked playing “kitchen” this week by taking out the pantry items from the cupboard and then bringing them up one by one to the kitchen counter where she would “make rice”.  She knew we make rice using the rice cooker and wanted to bring it out too.  She took out all of the cans of sardines and bags of dried goods.
• This past weekend, we took bb downtown via Go Train for the first time (kids under 12 ride for free), walked by Harbourfront, and to the Toronto Railway Museum.  It was a really hot day and I’m glad that we took advantage of her early 7 a.m. wake-up time to catch an early train to avoid the afternoon heat.  Bb enjoyed playing with the train set in the museum the most.  DH also took her on the outdoor train (where we went on a date for Doors Open a few years ago).  Bb was so tired out that she passed out when we were walking back to Union Station.
• Day trip to Port Hope (Ontario’s favourite small town!).  We had lunch at one of the pubs (most varied menu out of all the ones I pursued) and then browsed the special event that was going on (watched kids being dunked into water) and let bb play on the playground there before we headed home (and not before grabbing a Roast Beef and Cheddar sandwich from Arbys first!).
• Bb has been enjoying taking my indoor slippers to wear around the house.  She is so proud about it too.
• One of the topics in the September baby groups is that another parent’s 21 month-old baby was also waking up at night to have milk and she wanted to gradually wean him from it.  She received advice from other moms to give the baby only water at night and/or give half water and half milk.  This is something we have started to try as well.
• She was able to open the toy taxi car door for the first time by herself.  Her fine motor skills are developing.