Bean at 19 Months

I haven't shared much about Bean lately so I thought I'd give a little update in case anyone was curious :)

Bean is 19 months old now and is so much fun! She loves to run, climb and just generally try to keep up with her brother and sister.

She got loves music and to dance and will usually insist that anyone who is in the room must dance with her any time music is on.

She is talking a lot now and is still singing as well. Over the past month or so she has dropped a couple of signs from use in favor of just saying the word instead. She has stopped signing more for the most part but will loudly tell you "more, more!" if she is still hungry. Her favorite signs at the moment seem to be bike, toothbrush and cereal.

She loves to look through books and if Buzz or Boo happen to be laying on the couch reading she'll usually grab a chapter book off the bookshelf and climb up on the couch too.

She loves the book Too Purpley! which she refers to as "pore-pul" but for whatever reason she only wants Buzz to read it to her.

At bedtime she usually requests Titch because there are bikes in it and bikes are pretty much her favorite thing right now. She'll bring the book to either Ruben or I and say and sign "bike!" excitedly.
She also loves the book There's a Wocket in My Pocket and signs toothbrush whenever she pulls it off the shelf.

Bean has really fine motor skills and I'm very impressed with how well she eats with a fork and spoon. She loves to eat cereal and it's so cute to watch her feed herself and then drink the milk from the bowl!

Her favorite food right now is any kind of pasta and whether it's macaroni and cheese or spagetti she calls it all "chee chee".

We haven't done much in the way of organized tot school time since we moved but Bean has still been a very busy little girl each day. Whenever the big kids are sitting down doing their schoolwork she loves to pull out one of Buzz's old workbooks and a pencil and work in her "wor-book" too.

She is also very bossy with Buzz and Boo and has no problem telling them exactly what she wants them to do. If she unhappy with anything she will wave her hand back and forth and loudly declare "no, no!"

Tot School: 13 months 3 weeks

Bean is currently 13 months 3 weeks old



 

Bean's first tray was three books-

         

 

Tray two was a puzzle. She tried to get the pieces in a couple of times but ended up getting pretty frustrated with it. She only pulled this tray out one time this week.

Tray three was jumbo buttons and a shoe box with a hole in the lid. I originally started with just a slit cut in the lid but she wasn't able to get the buttons in by herself that way so I ended up making a bigger hole.

She seemed to like dumping all of the buttons back out more than putting them in.

Of course wearing it as a hat is the most fun of all!

Tot School: 13.5 months

Bean is currently 13.5 months

Bean had 3 tot trays this week

Tray one held 3 books-

         

Oooh Oooh Moo was Bean's favorite this week. It is a sweet, simple book that features pictures of animals and the sounds they make. She attempted to say "moooo" every time we got to the cow page. She also really enjoyed the sensory aspect of the touch and feel book.

Tray two was a small box that held toy bugs along with a little net, all of which came from our bug sensory.

Bean liked opening and closing the box and taking the bugs in and out. I also held the net for her so that she could put the bugs into it and then dump them all back out again.

  

Tray three was six clothespins clipped to a ramekin. Well, we started with six but she broke a few so by the end of the week it was three clothespins clipped to a ramekin. The point of this activity was for her to pull each of the clothespins off. She isn't anywhere near ready to clip them on by herself yet so I helped with that part. This was her favorite tray this week.

Two things that Bean has enjoyed doing a lot of this week are dancing...

and coloring!

Tot School: First Week!

Bean is 13.5 months old

Buzz and Boo had their first week of the new school year this week so I decided to start Tot School with Bean as well. It's really no different than what we've been doing all along anyway, but writing it in my planner and scheduling it in my day allows me to make sure that Bean and I get focused time together just the two of us every day.

This week I put together three trays for Bean. The first held three books:

      

Bean won't normally sit still while I read her a story straight through (though she did surprise me and sit through Pajama Time a few times this week). Her favorite thing to do with books is to point to different things on each page and have me name whatever she's pointing at.

The second tray had five wooden blocks. Bean hasn't shown much interest in blocks and isn't quite able to stack them yet but I figured I'd set them out and see what she did. She took out the tray each day and gave stacking an effort for a minute or two then moved on.

Tray three was her favorite! An ice cube tray and counting links. The first day that she tried this she mostly
just wanted to take the links out and asked Boo and I to put them back in for her.

This is the face that she makes every time she sees me holding the camera, silly girl!

She did eventually decide that dropping them in was fun though!

The next day when she tried this tray she was much more focused on putting the links in by herself

She also used the ice cube tray to knock the blocks down :)

Check out what other little ones did for tot school this week:

My "Students" 2011-2012

We won't officially start the new school year until after Labor Day but on the first day we will, of course, be taking the customary picture of each child holding up a sign with their grade written on it :)

For now I'll share their birthday photos, taken last month:

Buzz - 7 years old, 2nd grade

Buzz loves anything Toy Story, Transformers or Legos. He's an amazing reader and would rather read than play outside. He's sweet, funny, kind and a great big brother. Basically he's just an all-around awesome kid!

Boo - 5 years old, Kindergarten

Boo loves to dance and has recently developed a love of horses. She reads way above grade level and loves to learn. She's very compassionate and loving but she's also our resident drama queen!

Bean - 1 year old, Tot School

If I had to pick one word to describe Bean it would be JOY. She is almost always happy and has brought so much laughter and love into our home! She spends her days trying to keep up with the big kids and getting into adorable mischief.

Poor Bean!

Bean had a little mishap on Thursday afternoon. She was playing in the living room with Buzz and Boo and fell on her leg the wrong way. She cried a little bit, but as soon as I picked her up and comforted her, she seemed fine. I put her right into her high chair because it was lunch time and she ate her lunch just fine and then she played in her high chair for a bit longer while I cleaned up the kitchen after lunch.

By the time I got her out of her high chair, it had been about an hour since she had fallen and I had pretty much forgotten about it. But when I went to set her down on the floor she tried to walk, her left leg buckled and she started to cry. I wasn't sure what was going on so I set her back up to try to walk again, but the same thing happened. She tried a few more times to get back up on her own but every time she fell back down and began to cry. At this point I was concerned so I called Ruben and picked him up at work and we all headed to the emergency room.

At the emergency room they took an x-ray of her leg. I really wasn't thinking that it was anything too serious because unless she was trying to stand on it, she was her normal happy self. Then the doctor came in and told us that she had a small buckle fracture in the fibula. They put her leg in a splint in the ER.

The next day I took her to get her cast put on. The doctor said that she will be in the cast for 4-6 weeks depending on how well she is healing. I was concerned that Bean was going to be miserable, not being able to walk around for that long. The doctor assured me that she would come up with a way to get around and if she figured out a way to walk on the cast then it wouldn't hurt her recovery at all. And wouldn't you know, less than 24 hours after the cast was put on, she was walking! I was relieved to see that a broken leg isn't going to slow her down!

Bean's 1st Birthday Party

Yesterday we had Bean's first birthday party! Her birthday was actually almost two weeks ago, but Ruben was out of town then, so we waited until he got home to celebrate. We invited 10 families and originally 6 had RSVP'd as being able to come but 3 ended up not being able to make it at the last minute. It was still a lot of fun though!

I'm not a big fan of birthday parties in general (throwing them at least, attending them is fine) so Buzz and Boo only had first birthday parties and we do something special as a family to celebrate every other year. I wanted to make sure that Bean got a special party just like her brother and sister though! We ate snacks and played with our friends. Bean and her friend Jack (three months older than Bean) walked around taking food off of everyone's plates. They're just too cute to say no to :)

 When it was time for the cake Bean wasn't too sure about the whole thing. She just looked at the piece of cake sitting in front of her for a minute before Buzz finally smashed her whole hand into it. She still didn't eat it until she saw all of the other kids chowing down on their cake and then she realized 'hey maybe this stuff isn't so bad after all' Needless to say, she ended up enjoying the cake very much!

The party was very low-key, spending time with friends and eating- just our style!

And because I never got around to posting about Bean actually turning one, here are a few extra pictures from the last few weeks for you to enjoy:

We love you sweet girl!