Happenings....

Figured it might be time to do a real post...just some updates from the land of Mari.

• Mari has grown 2 inches and lost a pound since her birthday in March...needless to say, she is starting to look a little leggy and she has a neck!
• Mari's gross motor skills are doing much better; her muscle tone is still a little on the weaker side especially when she's tired but we have a lot fewer falls and wobbles these days.
• Climbing has become a sport. She can get just about everywhere in the house now and has learned to stack stools on top of each other to get higher. Fun things to get are the timeout timer, markers out of the craft box (good thing she hasn't found the glue or paint yet!), cell phones/remotes/cameras, and any food items.
• Language is crazy...fullout, hilarious conversations. I'm impressed with her grasp of concepts now. She understands things like what to wear outside depending on the weather (I had to buy an umbrella because she was VERY upset we didn't have one). She completely gets possessives..."Mommy, that coke's yours and this is my milk." We have extensive conversations about where birds fly to and why the wind blows.
• Memory. I'm constantly amazed by Mari's memory for names. She can name every character on every TV show. She knows every kid in school, all the mommies and daddies, all the brothers and sisters, all the teachers' spouses and kids. Everyday we leave, she'll say "there's BJ's mommy" and a woman will whip around and smile at her and say "yup, I'm BJ's mommy." (Or whoever it is.) She can usually tell me who the cars in the parking lot belong to, too.
• Mari is starting to do some pretend play. A little bit with dolls and her Little People. We had an incident last week where her pink bunny rabbit was biting her giraffey. Pink bunny rabbit had to apologize and then go to timeout and giraffey needed his boo-boos kissed. Raffey then practiced telling pink bunny rabbit to "stop biting me, that's not nice!" (Can you tell what she hears at school all day?) Luckily the episode of sitting her dolls in the chair and telling them to "sit down and shut up" only happened a couple times and I haven't heard it lately.
• Potty training is going awesomely. Mari has been dry for 3 weeks at night. I'm in no hurry to take away the diaper for bedtime and she doesn't balk at it yet, so why tempt fate? We went shopping on Sunday to 4 stores and then fast food and she never once asked to go potty and was fine. We are averaging 4ish hours between potty breaks and only 1 accident in the last couple weeks!!
• Mari moved up in school this week. She is now in the "older" 2s. Her class was getting new teachers and, since she was due to be moved up in another 6-8 weeks, I asked them to go ahead and move her. She always has difficulties with caregiver changes and I figured it was stupid to transition to a new teacher and then turn around and move again. They were reluctant but agreeable. Her "new" teacher is actually one of her old teachers from a few months ago and most of the kids in the class are familiar because they were with her a few months ago. The transition has gone smoothly and Mari has been so excited about going to school. In the evenings, she is so animated and hyper that I think she is really enjoying her new class. There have been NO signs of the usual rejection/trust issues that I've seen in the past with this type of change. BIG sigh of relief.

I'm sure there's more things I could tell you about. But you're probably tired of reading. And I need to save something for another post.

Mari practicing posing for picture day at school. We finally got good pix this time...4th time she's had school pix and this is the 1st time they came out good!

Making "birthday cake." Actually, banana bread but everything is birthday cake to her!

She's got some hair!

A Mari Masterpiece

Mari working on her Masterpiece!