26 Months

Finley's due date just passed (9/24) and had she not been born early, she would have turned two. But since she was born two months early, Fin just turned 26 months old on September 22nd. Here's what she's been up to lately:

- She can recite the numbers up to 11

- While reading Goldilocks and The Three Bears, Finley pointed one at a time to the bears and said "1, 2, 3 bears." She is not only using rote memory, but know she is actually counting!

- When she plays with her magnetic letters, she'll pick them up one at a time and say letter name. She hasn't paired the name with the correct symbol yet, but she's well on her way.

- Finley is learning her shapes. So far, she knows square, oval, circle, star and diamond. We're working on rectangle, heart, pentagon and octagon.

- When she doesn't know the correct verb to use she uses the generic "I do ___", for instance while sweeping Fin will say "I do broom mama." Too cute!

- It seems that I have raised a little shopper. When we're looking at clothes, I'll hold things up and ask Finley if she likes it. She'll say "No mama" if she doesn't, and if she does, she'll say "oh toot (cute), mama. Toot!" When we pass the shoe section of Target, she always takes off her shoes and wants to try new shoes on too!

- Finley has always been pretty athletic. I think because of her thin body build (she doesn't have much chub but she does have a lot of muscle), she is more agile than some of her peers. Besides doing basics (climbing up and down stairs by herself, getting in and out of adult furniture easily, running, jumping, etc), she's also taught herself how to do somersaults, hand stands and head stands. She'll be starting gymnastics classes soon!

- Her fine motor skills are developing nicely too. When she colors, she seems to scribble less and be trying harder to make certain lines and designs. Once we noticed that she was trying to copy the letter F!

- Fin is getting very specific about how she likes her food. For example, she used to just ask for cereal but now she'll ask for cereal, bowl, spoon and milk.

- Favorite snacks right now - frozen grapes and ice cream. She loves them both!

- New words - cucumber, basketball, choo choo train, zebra, rhino, giraffe, moose, owl, teacher, piano, animal