I don't know WHY there is a huge space before the posts, I'm trying to fix it.

My little girl is picking up so many words now, I just can't keep track. She talks in "teagan-ease" which is sometimes close to english, often quite a bit different. My favorite from yesterday: "Shi-su" (sushi) hehe.

She was flipping through a kids 'seek and find' sort of book, reading it to me last evening. The first two didn't surprise me: "Duck - ack-ack-ack-ack" & "Maow-maow-maow" (cat meowing) But then she labelled a lot of other things I didn't know she'd picked up: "Poooon" (spoon), "Ah-pay"(airplane), "key", "tuck" (truck) and so on through the book, until she got bored. Sometimes I worry I'm not "teaching her" enough, focussing on vocabulary and things, but then I realise I talk to her ALL THE TIME. If we're together I'm either talking to her or describing everything I do. "I'm going to get out out of your carseat now, Snap! Snap! Up we go. Should we go see if daddy is home yet? He might still be at work, let's go see" and really, what more does an almost 17month old need?
- posted by Wendy @ 10:19:00 a.m.

 
We're all settled into our new home (YAY) so hopefully life can start getting back to normal. I'm really proud of Teagan, she's been adjusting to all the changes and stress so well. She's spent time with the grandparents, hanging out at the new yards, and all over as we painted and packed and moved. She's showing a little bit of stranger shyness that is newish, but that's the only response to the PILES of stress we've been under. She's been a tad clingier, too, but I think that's partly from being away from us more.

Our new home has two small fenced yards! Teagan loves hanging out in them, playing with rocks, smelling the flowers, picking the strawberry patch bare :) We have to remove a couple of really thorny rose bushes to open up the main yard more, hopefully in the next couple of days. I'm so excited to be able to have her playing outside all the time, she loves it so much. "SIDE!" she demands, even if she JUST came in.

Her room is a BRIGHT Orange-Yellow colour, we thought it was too bright at first but now we love it. She seems happy, too, as she squealed when we went in there to check it out all painted. She's sleeping fine so I guess it's not TOO bright :)
- posted by Wendy @ 12:56:00 p.m.

 
Teagan surprised me this weekend....I was putting on her socks or shoes, and counting as I did them, "One....." and before I got to the second she piped up "twooo!" I thoguht I'd imagined it so I tried again "One...." "twooo!" she says, with a smile. Gamma had been playing with some paint rollers the other day, counting out "one, two, and where is three?" putting them in and out of the box, I guess "one-two" cemented itself in her little head! That and I do count things just for something to say to her quite often.

She's also taken to saying "Sock - a - Shoe!" (socks and shoes). Cracks me up to hear her little baby-voice saying things so clearly!
- posted by Wendy @ 3:41:00 p.m.

 
Teagan's Gamma (aka: Gamma Ray, to differentiate between my mom: Grandma, I guess) has been playing with her around the new house as we renovate. Today she wasn't feeling well, just wanted to sleep a lot, so she was napping on the floor, and Gamma decided to join her:

- posted by Wendy @ 10:23:00 p.m.

 
Teagan's had full, busy days lately, exporing our new yards at the house. It's unkept and overgrown in parts, which makes it all the more adventuresome for a little girl. She got to pick herself some strawberries to nibble on, too. We tried to put her to work helping us paint, but she was just too tired!

- posted by Wendy @ 10:20:00 a.m.

 
The other day Teagan slid the large bin of rice over to the wall, and climbed up on it, so she'd be tall enough to reach stuff on the shelf in the pantry. She often plays in there, that's where we keep the newspapers, and since she COULDN'T reach any food we didn't worry. But with her little inventive stepstool, she got the package of raisins down, and marched around carrying them, happily munching away. She did stop to share a few with me, though:

- posted by Wendy @ 9:30:00 p.m.

 
I love chatting with Teagan, she says so many words, and with the signs, I can play little games, ask her questions, give her instructions. She really seems to enjoy communicating, too. Daycare is stepping up the sign language in general, I'm going to have to study up to keep up with her.

She loves this one song they used to sing at daycare "riki-tiki-tiki Ram-sam-sam" or something like that, but the gal who sang it left daycare, so I need to find another way to learn it. She asks for it, wiggling her fingers and saying "tika-tika".
- posted by Wendy @ 8:56:00 p.m.

 
Teagan is showing a preference for Buddhism....

We stuck that little stone buddha on the birdbath at our new house, and Teagan was quite fascinated with him this morning. She waved:


Then she made offerings (pine needles) to him:

- posted by Wendy @ 9:31:00 a.m.