Week of January 21 - What's New?

Well, let's see...for starters, Emily is really enjoying her new Leapfrog Fridge ABC learning toy, as you can see in the photos below. This is a big time hit for Emily! Yay for auntie Michelle on that one!!! :)

If you are not familiar with this toy, it is one of the Leapfrog learning set where the unit and the letters of the alphabet are magnetic so you can attach them to your fridge. Since we were already putting up soft magnet sheets to the fridge to amuse Emily, the timing on this new toy was perfect.

There are actually all 26 letters in this fridge set, but I only give Emily 4 or 5 at a time because otherwise they would be scattered to who knows where in the house. Emily quickly learned the fundamentals and can pick and insert a letter into the slot on the unit and then push the letter so it will sound out the pronunciation and a short tune. She loves it and will repeat after the machine in most cases. Needless to say she is having a blast, but I have to watch for letters on the floor as she sometimes simply puts them on the floor instead of back onto the fridge. Just to keep my alert and on my toes I am sure. :)

Cute little story to share with you now: Yesterday morning, as Nancy was getting ready to leave for work, I was giving her a hug and a kiss before she leaves. Emily, standing near by looked up at us both and promptly said "Mommy...Dada...[insert smooching sound here]" along with a big beaming smile on her face. This was an interesting cognitive development as she put two words and a sound (the smooch sound, since she does not say kiss yet) together to form a meaningful sentence. Needless to say, it made our day for a number of reasons (smart, clever, and appreciative of family affections).

One thing that Emily really enjoys is anything that has photos of babies or children. She just loves them and will point and say "baybee!". So last week, we took down last years calendar in the kitchen (it was an calendar from our adoption agency, and is full of photos of adopted children) and gave it to Emily. Emily promptly moved said calendar into the family room to be with her rather large assortment of toys, bottles, boxes, and other odds and ends. This next photo is a classic of Emily taking time to look through the calendar and spend some quality time admiring other babies.


Note: being a current favorite item, said calendar later was tucked safely away back into the toy box by Emily for later. She is actually pretty good about putting toys away now, but won't typically do this unless we first put one or two into the toy box. At that point, she gets the message and begins picking up.

All kids love blocks I think. Emily has one of the huge boxes of Lego blocks from this Christmas and just loves them. She can in fact pick up the whole container (strong girl!) and dump them out on the the floor in one move. The current theme with blocks is to hand them to Dada so he can build them up, and then Emily likes to knock them down and pull them apart, as we can see in this next photo.


However, while Emily is still learning about how to interlock the blocks together, she can in fact neatly stack them (unlocked block to block) and I have seen her neatly stack as many as 7 of them one on top of the other. I expect in a couple weeks she will have the locking mechanisms figured out as well.

This last photo has a story behind it. When we were in China, the very first toy I gave Emily was this little Sassy Horn with little buttons on it that say sounds or play music when you push them. She just loved this little toy from the beginning. Well a few months ago, the batteries wore out and it really bothered Emily. Every day or two she would bring the little horn to me and hand it to me with this look on her face that said "come on Dada, fix please!". Well, the horn is sealed and you cannot replace the battery. And I kept striking out when I went to the store to find a replacement. Finally, last week, Toys R Us restocked and I snagged one. I brought it home and quietly replaced it for the old one. It was really fun to watch the next time Emily picked up the horn and it now made sounds again. Emily = happy camper on that one :)


What can I say, being able to be a hero and fix the horn for my baby girl....even though it is a small thing by measure in this world....it is very much a joyful thing in my life. Her smile and happiness makes me all warm and fuzzy inside.