Syona soaking up new learnings like a sponge

It's not all fun and good things when it comes to raising my daughter. Recently she learned a couple of new behaviors. First one is that some nights when I come home, especially later in the night, she has learned to great me with an enthusiatic "NOOOOOO". I'm pretty sure that this has to do with her associating me with putting her to bed. She is at the stage where Sleep is to be avoided at all cost when it's at home.... Not that she avoids going to the crib, but she likes to stretch it to as late as possible. There is a new routine where she wants to keep learning up to her bed time. She is interested in some of the new iPhone apps I downloaded that describes and shows pictures of different animals and also of the alphabet. She is definitely learning and growing up in that the bed time routine is not fun enough with just reading books- she now picks the books she wants to read at night (she likes the Rainbow Fish, and Good night SF is still okay), but some of the other books are too small/kiddish for her now. Same thing with the music we put on before bath time. She no longer wants to listen to the baby music from before that sounds too much like for babies; instead, she insists on the more musical and lively type of toddler music. Back to the other "not so fun" behavior, one morning she woke up with the demand for Dada to go down and get her a bottle of milk to start of the day... we got a good laugh that morning, because it was really like a demand, with a small push to go downstairs and get the milk (and it was specifically for Dada to go get the milk), this has been my morning routine for a while, but the efficiency in the demand itself was really something.

Father day- 6/19

Syona woke up that morning and Shilpa asked her to say "I love you" and corny as it is, it was the first day that she was able to formulate those words. Since then though we have not heard her say those words. That week she is also able to count the numbers from 1 to 10. She just need queues of repeating the word from us (Syona says 1, we say 1, Syona says 2, we say 2...all the way up to 10). It isn't always complete, most of the time she still stops at 4, but she definitely knows what comes next. I think the caterpillar book has really helped with this, and the new montessari type card that Shilpa has created for her one night. Her favority number is 8... I'd like to say that this is the chinese side of her coming out, but I think the reality is that she really enjoyed that episode of Elmo/Sesame Street.

PS- Her shirt says Daddy's little Monster.

Counting

Syona has been growing up pretty mighty fast recently. She can count 1-5. Sometimes she says 2 like three times so its: 1, 2...2..2, Twee, Fo, Fi, haha. Paul claims she also knows 6, 7 and that 9 comes after 8.

It's been really nice having her weaned. Although the whole process probably cost me 5+ pounds from the lack of working out during weaning to the eating without having the extra 500 calories or so burned a day. (I've been managing by just recently signing up for a trainer, starting to run again, and doing some cool cross-training and toning classes). Syona also sleeps through the night now, 7:30 to 5:30 (+/- a half hour) but she is pretty consistent. Instead of breastfeeding her in the morning, I or Paul go down to get her a bottle. She used to gulp down 10 oz and then ask for "more mum mum." So we used to go down and get her more. The other day I got smart and filled up two bottles at once and brought them upstairs (one I made extra hot for later) and so she drank her first and had a few sips of the second and went to bed. Then she woke up like 3 hours later and asked for more milk, so I handed her the bottle and she pushed it away with her hands and said "ole mum mum". I couldn't believe it! She knew it was old from before! "Ole mum mum, down". I had to lie to her and say "No Syona, when you were sleeping, dada brought you more mum mum". After saying it like 20 times she had a few sips but she never finished it.