Now who's contrary?

I have been known, on occasion, to use the word "contrary" in reference to my daughter. I love her. In general I think having a strong will and knowing her own mind are traits that will serve her well in life. It can occasionally (often) make parenting challenging at this stage, but overall, I like her personality.

This week in particular I am reminded that she comes by those traits honestly.

For example:

• I complain they won't play independently... but feel guilty when they play together beautifully while I spend an hour straight cleaning and "ignoring" them.
• I complain that Ava's too much a "mama" girl... and then feel jealous when she wants Daddy to be the one to fix her hair.
• I complain that I never get to sleep in any more...then, when I have the opportunity to sleep in, I get up at 7:30 am anyway.

Speech Sample - Suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech - 25 months (2)

This sample was recorded three weeks after the last one I posted (4-26-11). She's picked up two additional consonant approximations. She's approximating /g/ and /s/ in this sample. What is interesting is that both of those sounds disappeared later. We are working on /s/ now, but I have to remind her to make it. She isn't really making the /g/ sound at all any more.

More important than individual sounds is that she's moved to using multi-word utterances. In this sample she produces 10 utterances. 2 of those are one word (both two-syllable). 5 of those are three words (4 syllables per utterance). One utterance was four words long (5 syllables)! This is a huge increase in average sentence length in three weeks.

Transcript:
get down mama
get down mama
get down
get down
get down
uh huh
no mama get down
mama
mama scissors
dada scissors

Busy Book - Underwater Bead Maze Page

I'm very pleased with this one. First I made a background underwater scene. Then I made three interactive tracks.

The first track is for the plane. The plane moves from right to left getting higher in the sky at it goes. When it hits the cloud it has a little trouble and someone (either Michael or Ava) needs to help the pilot get through the cloud (by threading the bead through the loop).

The second track is for the boat. The boat begins by moving from left to right along the top of the water. Each time it hits a wave it needs help. After it hits the third wave it sinks down to the ocean floor.

The third track is for a fish. He starts at the bottom in his home by the coral before going on a treasure hunt. He works his way up to the top of the underwater mountain where he finds a treasure chest.

Here are the beads in their beginning positions:

And here they are in their final positions: