Over 4 months..hitting daycare

I was remembering about two weeks ago about the journey of the last 4 months. We came home with our little girl on March 28th. It's unbelievable to me that I've had this wonderful addition to my life such a short time ago, but she's become such an integral part of all of our lives.

We've turned this little girls life upside down and inside out since we snatched her out of her baby home. She's not that withdrawn little girl we were playing with quietly. She's a dive bombing little amazon who is running around. She used to be quiet and introspective to start. Now she's coming with books and presenting them to Mommy or Daddy to read to her. I don't know if she'd ever seen a book much before we saw her. She didn't know what to do with one other than chew on it or throw it. Now we MUST read or she is not happy.

She clearly knows her name is Alina...but also answers to Munchkin, Munchie, and booboo. Don't ask me how we ended up with these ridiculous nicknames, but we did.

When we first started everything, I was the primary caregiver for almost 12 weeks. Then Andy took over and we introduced Mother's Day Out 2 days per week. (Okay as Andy demands, Father's Day Out). Well this past two weeks we've introduced Nana (Grandma) care for a week and then this week we started Daycare....lots of changes in a little girls life.

Monday we started daycare at our church. We deliberately waited for our church daycare and also tried very hard to make this transition week easier with my Mom's help. She's been getting her out a little earlier than we will starting next week. The first day we went to daycare and all the other children that were there were so tiny and bald. Alina was a head taller and has so much hair.

We thought it was because she is so much bigger. Yesterday I went to class to drop her off with her teacher and I saw all the 5 other children. None of them walk yet. She looked like the Jolly Green Giant with munchkins from the wizard of oz. I asked how old they were and they were 9-12 months. Alina is 16 months now. They had put her in the wrong class. So after 3 days of trying to return her to a morning nap, they've put her into the right class with other 16-18 months kids. She will be with 4 little boys and 1 little girl...we shall see how this change goes...

Sorry I haven't updated the blog in so long, but we've been swamped with work and life. Love to you all. I'll try to be more regular about it.

Updates..

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I posted. In that time Alina has grown another few inches, is fully walking, and has picked up one more word.

Alina is now about 14.5 months and we're starting to have to pull out 18-24 month clothes. We have a little Amazon on our hands.

She can walk around the house and wherever for a pretty good distance. She actually has gotten used to shoes and is more stable. But overall, she's still a little wobbly.

She now has a 5 word vocabulary: Momma, Dada (Daddy), Bye-bye and the last two are 'Uh-Oh' and 'Woof'. She's been learning vocab from the dog.

We have two more weeks of home time with Alina until she starts Daycare. The routine with Andy and going to Mother's-Day-Out two days a week has worked great. We're sincerely hoping that August will go as smoothly as the transition in June.

Love to all...

Smug Baby...

I have a smug little girl. She's so proud of herself. She leaned up against the couch and then took 6 steps to me. Then she started playing and walking around the living room. She's still trying to cruise a little bit, but she had a definate breakthrough tonight as she was walking around more.

Prior to this is was walk two steps ... FALL...walk two steps...FALL. But she's stopped doing the tippy toes and is doing flat footed.

Hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July. We're going to visit Andy's Mom.

Love to all.