Rocks and Spoons

Nadia's grandparents introduced her to a couple of new activities this week. Earlier in the week, my mom showed her that she could use one of her spoons to "feed" her big teddy bear. She has enjoyed using the spoon to "feed" her dolls, stuffed animals, piggy bank, etc. and found it even funnier to watch PopPop do the same yesterday. She enjoyed stroller rides on Tuesday and Thursday with her grandparents; I took her out myself today. It's gorgeous out! Yesterday my in-laws introduced putting rocks (and pieces of mulch) into the little pail that we got her for her swimming pool earlier this summer. Her attention span for finding rocks and putting them in her bucket is quite long. I let her do that again today as well. We still have to remind her not to eat the stones, and from time to time we have to take one out of her mouth. In general she's getting a little better about not putting everything in her mouth although I still feel like "no eat" is something I say quite a bit, and I still have to say it in reference to books from time to time. We also need to keep on working on not putting things in the garbage. Yesterday I said it in reference to one of my shoes for example!

I am VERY happy to say that Nadia went down very easily for her 2nd nap yesterday. It only took her 5 minutes to fall asleep, and she slept for 85 minutes. This morning she woke up at 5:45am, but I didn't get her until 6:15. Her morning nap was from 8:20-9:50. So far her afternoon nap has been one hour long (she's sleeping at the moment). She was back to her usual happy self yesterday. YAY! I was getting so weary of all the fussiness and crying. Hopefully we can stay in this 2 nap routine for a few more months. Since she didn't drop her 3rd nap until she was almost 10 months old, I wasn't expecting her to give up her 2nd nap so "soon," but she seemed to be wanting to go to one nap a day there for awhile. I am very glad to be back to 2 naps a day; for one thing, I also enjoy taking a nap during her morning nap. :-)