I may resolve to blog more often...I haven't decided yet. But until then I'll give the requisite Maxine update for those that have been asking!
Maxine is nearly 23 months. I can't believe she'll be TWO in July! She's a happy, funny, sweet, kind, and generous little girl. She is shy in front of strangers but in just a couple minutes she'll turn from not making eye contact to giving you all of her toys, one by one. If she likes you that is. ;-) Good thing she likes most everyone she meets.
She's currently in speech therapy. She was evaluated by county services around 18 months, and qualified for speech services upon a second speech-specific evaluation. All the rest of her development is either right on average or a little above, which was reassuring. Since Max has always done things a little late (sitting up, crawling, walking, and now talking), I wasn't that concerned, but I wanted to be sure if there was an issue we caught it early. So we went ahead and started therapy, in the 'better safe than sorry' mindset. Her speech and vocabulary exploded within weeks; she even went from 3 words to about 30 in the weeks between qualifying for speech and actually starting it. So I am not convinced the therapy itself has done much that wouldn't have happened in the natural course of her development. But, she has fun in speech, her therapist comes to the house once a week and plays just with her, and she loves it, so we'll continue until she's solidly at or past normal developmental patterns. She has probably between 75 and 100 words right now, and is putting together 2-3 word sentences. Favorites are 'all done milk' and 'night night daddy!'. Some of her favorite words are animal names and noises; duck, moo, horse, and 'dac' which she's still working on making sound like 'cat'.
She is silly as ever, and loves to run and tumble and play gymnast with the 'rents. She likes to do forward rolls, hang upside down, and fall dramatically to the ground then giggle madly. She's a good runner, but still gets tripped up on her toes pretty frequently, even just walking. She lives in pants or capris/leggings now because she is more or less guaranteed to skin her knees in just a dress or shorts. Many of her pants have holes in the knees from her tumbles. She's still pretty accident prone, falling from chairs or even just from her feet at least every week or two, but she is a trooper and usually just brushes her hands off and moves on.
Now for some photos of the last SIX months!
January, with the purse mama made her, off to conquer the world.
One of her favorite activies, swinging. She could swing for hours.
On a cold winter day
Winter swinging
March twirling
Before the great haircut of '09
After: The Suri.
Very dramatic
What happens on laundry day.
Happiest upside-down
More twirling, in her elephant shirt from my dear friend's
Etsy store.
A favorite indoor pastime. She loves closing clips on whatever she can find.
Busy at her sand and water table.
WHEW! I'm clearly going to have to post more frequently. That was nearly 3 seasons of photos. Can't have that again. ;-)
