Update on milestones

I keep forgetting to write a post updating all of the new things that Raegan is doing now. It seems like as soon as August hit, she just took off and made leaps and bounds in a lot of new skills. You especially can hear it in her speech. She's using three and even some four word sentences quite often now. When Luke and Raegan dropped by my school on Friday to bring me a pop (awesome husband!), he handed over the pop to me and Raegan said, "I want my wa-wa." Smartest girlie ever! :) She's also getting a lot clearer in some of the longer words that she says. Yesterday she said "hamburger" and it came out perfectly. She's not dropping syllables (which is still perfectly normal for her age) nearly as often as she used to, so it's getting easier to understand her. For a couple months there, we had the problem that Raegan's vocabulary is huge, but her actual speech abilities hadn't matured enough to catch up with the vocab, and sometimes she could be a little hard to understand. Now, we're golden about 95% of the time! :)

Raegan's also becoming more independent, and she really WANTS that independence. She is able to put on her flip flops by herself now (almost always on the right feet!) and she's working so hard at pulling up her pants by herself. Anytime she's trying to get dressed or undressed and you offer help, she very emphatically tells you, "No!" :) Potty training hasn't really gone anywhere, but seeing as she hasn't even turned two yet, I'm not too concerned. I wanted to give her some time to get readjusted to being in daycare (and to check with our daycare provider about what all she's willing to do to help) before we went guns blazing into potty training. Raegan still tells you when she's wet, pretty much as soon as it happens. She calls it all "poopy" whether she's wet or poopy, but she will tell you the difference if you specifically ask her "wet or poopy?"

Another fun skill that Raegan has picked up is "reading". We still read probably 10-20 books a day, and she's started "reading" her favorite ones also. When she reads Baby Bear Baby Bear (which is similar to Brown Bear, Brown Bear) she says, "Bay-boo bay-boo, uh uh see" (Baby Bear, Baby Bear, What do you see?) and then turns to the page with the fox and says, "Red fox, Red fox, uh uh see." I've been trying to catch it on video, because it's just too adorable.

Raegan's big love this summer has been Elmo. The theme for her birthday party next weekend is going to be Elmo, and I think she'll be really excited about the Elmo cake! As a treat, sometimes I let her watch Sesame Street on the television in our room. It's fun to lay on our bed with her and watch. Sesame Street is really quite funny, and I like watching it with her. Now that I'm back to work, we'll have to get videos from the library. Raegan has also started to really like Abby and Zoe, and gets pretty excited when she sees them on Sesame Street too.

I'm sure there is plenty more that she's been doing lately, but that's all I can think of at the moment. I can't believe she's going to be two in a couple weeks! My baby is most definitely not a baby anymore!