Again!

There are certain words and phrases that Nadia says the most frequently. One of her favorites right now is "have it,"which she says when she wants something and of course this includes any toy that I give Ian to play with -immediately it becomes the toy she most wants to play with. She also has started using the word "too" a lot. For example if I am eating corn she'll say "Nadia eat corn too." At the table the words I hear the most are "Nadia do it" (and she is getting better at using a fork or spoon and drinking from a glass) and "more." Another expression she says quite a bit lately is "I'm coming." She still hasn't started using the word "with" so some of her sentences are funny such as "color Mommy" which means she wants me to color with her. A word she has gotten a lot of use out of the past few months is "again." Anyone who swings her (or any other sort of rough house) will be sure to hear the word. She always says it at bedtime after I pray. I don't think it's a stalling technique. I think she finds it humorous that I have my eyes closed.The time when it is music to my ears is when she says it after I finish reading a book. No, it isn't because I like reading the same book over and over again -because I don't. It's because I love that she's loving books again. There was a time period where her attention span for books was very minimal. Thankfully that isn't the case right now. Her favorite books the last few days have been the Curious George books that we own. I am glad we have more than one because I'll read a book two or three times in a row and then when she says "again" I can just switch to a different Curious George book, and she's fine with that. We need to get more Dinosaur booksby Yolen and Teague because we only have one. I think Paul and I both are close to having that one memorized, LOL. She refers to that book as "Dinosaur get well soon" which I think is pretty good for 23 months old!

I've been working on teaching her to say her last name. She is doing pretty well. If I ask her what her brother's name is sometimes she says "Ian Kennedy." I'm not making any progress with getting her to say "two" when I ask her how old she is. She says "three" and laughs. She definitely has a sense of humor!

Ian's third nap (which is the one that overlaps with Nadia's only nap) was 40 minutes long today. WOOHOO! The first two were the typical 30 minutes. I can't tell you how much I appreciated those few extra minutes. Nadia's nap was 15 minutes shy of 3 hours long. Much better than yesterday's, which was less than 1 hour long. I was thinking today that one of my other priorities has been not letting the place get too cluttered. I can't stand clutter. I do spend time almost every day keeping that under control. Sometimes I start creating a pile in Paul's office so that it's out of my sight, but today I worked on that pile some.

Paul turned in the written portion of his comprehensive exam to his dissertation committee yesterday. He practiced the oral portion with his advisor today. Next Monday at 1pm he has his oral exam and then hopefully he'll be ABD (all but the dissertation). PTL! This has been a huge stress (and time commitment) for him so I can't wait until June 7th is behind us!!!