JANUARYS - 2010, 2009 AND 2008

January 2010 - big changes since last year. Alice had her second major experience of snow, she loves it, especially eating it and throwing snowballs. She loves our 3 dogs and our fish and snails, currently 6 fish and 1 large and 1 very small snail. She goes to nursery 2 full days per week, she loves going, she has a packed lunch each time and nearly always has egg sandwiches (a real labour of love as I detest them!) She's learning a lot very quickly, especially letters and numbers, she can sing the alphabet song with a few interesting edits (T, U, B!), identify 10 or so letters and count to 13. She's more strongly than ever attached to Flat Panda and was devastated to lose one earlier in the month. As for toys, her favourites are computers and playing games - D*tty Dinosaurs, D*odlebugs, dominoes and Un* Moo. Alice adores technology, I don't know if that's nature but it's definitely nurture! Princesses are a huge part of her life - small dolls, card games, sticker books and bedding but not films. Dressing up is still a very popular activity, especially as a Princess, fairy or an animals, she's more and more into pretending - both telling me made up things or becoming other things, especially animals. Monsters are also a big part of life but not a good one - they're frightening and can be found almost anywhere, a lot of films are frightening too. For most of last year Alice had lots of favourite films to watch but at the moment she'd rather watch TV - Sh*w Me, Sh*w Me or Hi 5 in particular. She loves books and, given the chance, will select a whole pile of books if anyone offers to read to her. Her favourites are Elm*r, the Sn*il and the Wh*le and a mermaid book, she still listens to Elm*r twice every evening after I've said goodnight. In the car she really likes to listen to Be*uty and the Bea*t. She's finally beginning to sing along to songs on the CD and even unaccompanied at times (she tends to sing Twinkle or Christmas songs). This month she began dance lessons and got a special reward at school for dancing too. She is very sure of her favourite people and always delighted to hear that we will be seeing them, especially A, O, L or GFN. She likes going to soft play centres but her very favourite activities always include animals - farms, zoos and aquariums. She also loves going to the theatre and went to the cinema for the first time last month (which she enjoyed but it was a bit too loud for her.) She's a social child who knows her own mind, she's opinionated and you won't change her mind without a good reason! Her favourite foods are mashed potato, cheesy pasta, eggs (especially egg sandwiches or boiled (dippy) eggs) and chocolate in any form, she's recently discovered hot chocolate but really only likes it lukewarm! She's demonstrative and very affectionate, she's becoming more and more helpful but she's still not very good at looking for things, even when they're in plain sight (like me!) She loves water too - playing with in (or in it), baths and swimming, she gets very wet at school and regularly comes home in a different set of clothes to the ones I left her in as she gets SO wet! She continues to love life and bring such joy, we are so lucky.

January 2009 - Alice has given up milk from a bottle (she had milk every morning and most evenings). Her speech is less clear recently but she's speaking in longer phrases and repeating EVERYTHING. She's finally really interested in story books and loves repeating the key phrases - her fav books are Dirty Bertie, Owl Babies and Elmer, she still hasn't got a long enough attention span for the Gruffalo! Role playing doctors and in the kitchen are favourite activities, jigsaws are finally interesting but turn taking games are much more fun - Who Knows Whose Nose is the best yet (ELC). Princesses and dressing up are Alice's most favourite activity. She can count from 2-5 but needs prompting for 1! She can fairly consistently name blue, white and a few other colours and she know the names of most of them but can't match them all up yet. She did love sausages, but not any longer, beans are still off the menu and toast isn't popular. Alice continues to love eggs and has now learnt how to eat boiled eggs. Her most favourite foods are oranges, cheese, potatoes, ham and chocolate.

January 2008 - lots of new words, lots of new teeth and most noticeably Alice took her first independent steps.

Some things haven't changed - most noticeably her easy going, affectionate personality (though that is now matched by being 2 and wanting control!) and her love of dogs.

(This is a post that I originally posted in 2009 and I felt it was time for an update!)