Singing

Madelyn has loved music since she was pretty little.  She loves to listen, to dance, to clap, and to conduct the music.  She loves to sit at the piano and play "songs" for us.  But, until tonight, she really didn't sing along with songs with a recognizable melody or words. 

She has this book of nursery songs with "The Wheels on the Bus," "Old McDonald," "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," and "The Hokey Pokey." I'm actually not sure how the Hokey Pokey ended up in that line up.  I did not put the book together.

Tonight, as happens many nights, her nursery songs book was one of the books she wanted to "read" at bedtime.  Usually she does the motions and laughs, occasionally makes an animal noise during Old McDonald, but that is it.  This time she sang along.  Mostly on key, and with definitely recognizable words.  Not for the full songs, but for good portions of each of them.  For her music loving parents, this was a BIG breakthrough!

More Firsts

We have been enjoying the unseasonably warm weather along with everyone else who lives in our area.  Madelyn is very excited to go to the park, and this spring has been more fun for us to bring her than it was last summer.  She is so much more independent, making choices and playing on the playground equipment without as much assistance as she needed last year.  One thing that she has been doing with Justin when he takes her to the park is counting the steps up to the top of the big slide (there are 9) and today for the first time she actually counted with Justin.  Granted, she didn't actually get all the numbers.  She skipped one and four and she's not convinced about seven, but still!

After dinner tonight we were playing with Madelyn's AquaDoodle and she wanted me to write out "Dada" for her.  She then spent several minutes saying "Dada!  D-a-d-a."  She even spelled it out for Justin when he came to see her.  I tried to convince her that she should give spelling mama a chance too, but I could only get "M - mama!"  I'll keep trying though :)

Turing a Day Around

Today was a rough day with Madelyn.  She has a cold and she is hitting her "terrible twos" with defiance everywhere.  After a bedtime that involved fighting a diaper change and putting pajamas on, throwing her toothbrush, and general uncooperativeness she ran to give us hugs before getting in her bed and for the first time said (with no prompting) "Love you!"  Suddenly, the day was not so bad.