Alita's growing fast, and tall for her age - she's been wearing
2 year old clothes for the last month or so. She’s learning fast
too, talking up a storm. She’ll repeat just about anything we
say (though she’s oddly reluctant to say “yes”), and will put
words together to describe things or tells us what she wants. The
other day she brought my shoes to me saying “mommy shoes” and
tried to put them on my feet. After I put one on she said “other
one” and looked very satisfied when I put it on as well. She
knows parts of songs, like the ABCs - she’ll jump in at W and Y
– and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star – she likes to join in on “like
a diamond.” She also knows all the basic colors, and loves to
draw. Fortunately washable markers really are as advertised. Her
other favorite activities involve sand at the park, and anything
to do with water. Saturday she has swimming class, and when I got
home from work I asked her what she did today. “Swimming pool!
Underwater! Duck!” She’ll play for hours in wading pools,
fountains, the bathtub.

15 months

Alita has learned the word "no." Sometimes it's cute; when she does something that usually elicits a "no" from us, she'll say it herself. "No" as she sticks her finger in her nose. "No" as she turns her cup of milk upside down on the table (or floor, or lap). "No" when she attempts to electrocute herself in our shockingly (ha!) nonbabyproofed living room. And sometimes it's not so cute: she is beginning to assert her desires, and when we thwart them by taking away a toy, etc. we'll hear that dreaded word several times at top volume. She also has a fearsome scowl when she thinks she may not get her way, which makes me fear for the teen years. Another ominous sign: her penchant for jewelry. She has a thing for watches and necklaces (which she calls "necky"). She particularly enjoys layering the latter in a cacophany of shiny strangulation hazards, which I think makes her more fashion forward than me. On a positive note, she has developed a serious interest in books. Her favorites are "Goodnight Gorilla," Richard Scarry's "Please and Thank You Book," and "Busy Busy Town." When we ask her to go get a book she'll toddle over to her bookshelf, grab a masterpiece and bring it back so she can sit in our laps- quite fun! Nadia reads them to her in Russian, but we're a little slow in that department- I've only learned a few body parts and animals. Her language skills are developing fast in both languages. We don't know how many she can say since we can't count the Russian ones, but I think she's already ahead of some wrestlers I knew in college. Finally, Al has learned to give kisses. Sort of. When prompted for one she'll lean in and plant her lips somewhere on your face; if you're lucky she'll remember to close them first.

Cousins!

Meet Uncle Ashton with daughter Maeve	Uncle Ashton with niece Alita

Alita & the Monkey

Alita is talking a lot. She says: Mama, Dada, moon, star, kye (sky), car, cab (crab), total (turtle), monkey (& she says "ooh-ooh"), purple, black, poon (spoon), oh (asking for Cheerio), booty (asking for a snack called “veggie booty”), noo-noo (noodle), gieppe (grape), kitty, dog, duck, kid, baby, Abby, Amy, Nana, and probably several more words in Russian that Nadia taught her.

She recognizes more words than she can say, like all the important parts of the head (eye, hair, nose, mouth, tongue, ear). She touches each when it is named in English or Russian but she doesn’t say them yet.

She sleeps through the night from 8 until 6:30 or 7. Very reasonable. She doesn’t like to be left at church daycare on Sundays and practically melts down when we tried a couple of times. I think we’re going to have to push ahead with that, though. We don't want to be dealing with that on the first day of school!

When we say “Where’s the baby?” she points to herself. Also she points to herself if we say “Where’s Alita?” But she’s not so good at saying Alita yet. She’s outgrowing the kitchen sink as her bathtub and had her first professional haircut on Sunday (disaster with screaming, etc. Erik was blissfully unaware at home). She was fussing when Amy tried to dress her the other day, saying Monkey over and over, until Amy realized that she wanted to wear her Monkey shirt. When she put it on, Alita was happy as a clam and marched around the house saying “Monkey, Mon-Key” for about half an hour.

Amy is wrangling the taxes and organizing the upstairs bathroom facelift. Erik is trying to apply for funding grants in this stimulus package and working in the HMC intensive care unit.

A year and then some

Ok, so we missed Al's one-year update in all the Christmas craziness. Craziness that she herself failed to grasp, though she did enjoy trying to break all the ornaments on the tree, and playing with all that lovely wrapping paper. She got a bunch of fantastic presents for Christmas and her birthday, only a few of which are designed to make her parents go slowly insane with electronic music (just kidding, those are our favorites because she dances to them- hilarious!) She ate half of her chocolate cake on her birthday and smeared the other half all over her face, meeting her first birthday obligations. She saw her uncles Jason and Michael in December and January, respectively, and didn't seem completely terrified of them.

In other news: 1. she's walking. She took her first steps in December, and after running laps around the house chasing Matthew's cat for 2 weeks she has really got it down. She demonstrated this past weekend that she can't navigate downhill yet and has the bruise on her cheek to prove it- fortunately the neighbors weren't watching when I negligently left her standing on the driveway for an entire 3 seconds. That's all it takes man- she can bite it in no time at all (she can also make it from the living room to the always-fascinating toilet bowl in about 1.3 seconds).

2. She's talking. While chasing poor Emmett, she learned her first real word ("mama" "dada" and "hi" could conceivably be random syllables). You haven't seen funny until you've seen a 2-foot tall mop of hair in footie pajamas staggering across the room after the "kitty kitty kitty kitty" while the poor thing runs for its life. She almost got him a couple of times. Almost. She can also say "good" (usually in relation to food) and "bye bye," complete with the wave. She recognizes and names photos of babies and constantly demands "key" (her favorite toy). Balloon ("boon") sounds suspiciously like spoon ("poon"). Before she started talking she started understanding words and pointing to objects we name like light, clock, eye, hair, flower (or making the sign for milk), but now that she's actually mimicking sounds we're in a bit of a panic (ok, I'M in a bit of a panic) because it means we have to clean up our language. I just know I'm going to be that lady in the grocery store whose kid proudly yells out some four-letter word and looks around for approval. On a related note, Erik and I have decided that Al may very well grow up thinking her name is Dude- we've noticed we call her that frequently. As in "Dude, why are you throwing that spaghetti on the floor?" or "Dude, that is one stinky diaper." Our second child will think his name is What the Hell.

As for general personality traits, she is still a fairly serious kid but she laughs more often now- she finds peekaboo and chase games around the couch particularly hilarious. She is very interested in putting objects inside of other objects, and will struggle mightily to put a displaced pen cap back on the pen. She dances to all sorts of inappropriate tunes- the NPR theme music, for example- as well as the more typical kiddie music. She goes to bed without too much fuss and sleeps through the night, which makes us more willing to tolerate her recent tendency to get upset when we take things away from her. Especially shiny things, like an 8" chef's knife or the finger - I mean cheese - grater. She eats everything we eat (well, what she gets in her mouth and not on the tarp we have spread under her high chair) and hasn't had any further Exorcist episodes in response to eggs. So it's a little surprising she fell off her growth curve at her one-year visit- she's merely average for height now. I guess all that cat-chasing uses up a lot of calories. That's it for now, check out the Picasa link for recent photos