Vocabulary explosion continues....

So, the daughter is almost 19 months old, and the most significant developments I see in the last 2-3 months are language, cognitive and emotional growth. (See update at 16-month here)

I continue to be amazed at HOW MUCH she picks up from us by simple observation.

On the vocabulary front, she has been saying complex words like:
Octagon - she knows the shape and can correctly place it in her shapes puzzle
Pentagon - same as above
Horseshoe
Bumblebee
Awesome
Excuse Me
Hawaii

and much much more. I cannot keep track of how many words she speaks - in Gujarati, Hindi (her favorites are kabhi kabhi and dhongi :P), and English. She is a parrot - she will instantly repeat everything!

Every single morning, after I brush her teeth and wash her face, she tells me she wants "scheme" - referring to "cream". She says it oh-so-oober-cutely.....I absolutely enjoy it. I long to hear her say "scheme" every morning :)!

She responds back in sentences like: "you cranky {canky} mumma" (yes, she said that to me once), "Pappa, this is blue ball", "mumma, here you go", etc. This is a significant development as well...that she can relate to the words/objects she knows and form meaningful sentences out of it.

Her gross motor skills and some fine motor skills are getting better - she can now hold a pen/brush and paint, she holds her wooden peg puzzles pieces, rotates them and places them in the right slots. She can hold a spoon and eat, but she will create such a huge mess that I don't let her do it as often as she should :(. She can stack blocks and build towers.

Cognitively, she is doing great as well. She can recognize people by looking at pictures, she remembers places (like mygym) and associates our drive to a familiar area to going to meme {mygym}, she knows all the alphabets (saying as well as recognizing the letters), she picks up the phone...says hello and starts talking (the other day, I spoke to her from work and she told me "hello mumma, love u, miss u" and I went awwwwwwwwwww), she dances to rhymes and hindi songs and even completes the song when we sing it (for example: hubby sings..."say shava" and then she will say "shava shava oh yeah" :)), she knows colors/shapes/few numbers (but no counting yet), etc

Her fascination remains with books - we still read about 15 different books each day. Library is our best friend these days. We get all kinds of books for her - flap books, fruit/veggie picture books, simple story books, etc. She loves the one where Dora is looking for the person who made the huge footprints in the sand. She also loves the Curious George Pizza party book. Ofcourse, the older ones - Hugless Douglas, Thomas, etc are also still her favorites.

Socially and emotionally, she understands SO much. We have to be extremely watchful of our behavior in front of her. I cannot simply tap or pinch the hubby (jokingly, ofcourse)....she takes offense to it. Vice versa is also true. If we avoid talking to her or playing with her, she gets pissed off. On one such instance last week, I was talking to hubby about something and she felt avoided. She came and bit me so hard....it left a bad bruise on my arm. I was stern and told her that this behavior was not acceptable...however, I have no idea how much got into her head.

One other awesome thing is - she now picks up stuff from the floor, and instead of putting it in her mouth, she takes it to the trash can. Ofcourse, we are very watchful and never leave her unattended, but still, this is very good progress from the stage where everything went into the mouth - sometimes we knew what went in, many times we didn't :).

I also found some simple activities for her to do from things in the house. One suggestion from my mom's group was to use the empty wipes container (plastic) and have her fill it with stuff inside (we used plastic rings which can be chained together). I showed her to do it, and she plays with it for few minutes everyday. She chains the rings, puts them in, removes them....has not learnt how to unchain them yet but we will get there.

Another thing I did is - took an empty oatmeal cylinder (made of cardboard) and showed her how to put blocks inside, shake and make noise, roll it on the floor, then open it and remove the blocks, and then do the whole process again. The first day...she spent more than 45 mins playing with that thing. Even now, she enjoys playing with it.

We explored making art on card stock using foam pieces and some glue at the museum. We also did painting on glass. She still loves her Aquadoodle and paints on it with her water pens or brush every single day. However, I need to get her to explore different textures - play dough, sand, etc. Since its been chilly outside and she has either had a cold or fever every weekend, we have been cautious about doing things outdoors.

Her streak of saying NO in gazillion different ways continues. I feel I should have a counter to record how many times she says NO during the day! Part of this is because she is becoming more and more independent, and mature. We understand that....and I'm glad we are both extremely patient when it comes to interacting with her.

I feel time should go a weeeeee-bit-slow though :).....my munchkin is growing up faster than I can blink!

And I love this pretty face - a LOT!!!!!