Yesterday, Karen told me that the day care where we are sending Sarah during the day wants to move her up to the next classroom. Claire did an excellent job with making her participate in the classroom activities when she was at K-Prep, that she is very advanced and independent and just wants to read books and play constructively. The other kids won't let her do these activities, so they want to move her and expose her to more advanced kids to continue to push her in her learning and independence. They just want her to be able to walk a bit more steadily before they move her full time. They are going to try it out a couple of days a week.
Along those same lines, Karen and I have been trying to figure out what constitutes vocabulary. There are many many words that Sarah knows and will respond properly to, but that she can not say (or doesn't say). Would only the words she says and uses be considered vocab, or those that she knows?
As far as a list of what she can say/do, here is a list (for my reference):
BaBa (bottle)
Cup
Cat
BubBub (dog)
Dog
Meow
Ruff (dog sound)
Roar
Blue
Yellow
MaMa
DaDa
PaPa
Mom
Dad
Todd
Megan
Duck
Quack
(And many more I'm sure, leave them in comments if you know of any I missed)
She also knows the sounds that a dog, cat, gorilla, duck, fish, lion, elephant, cow, and chicken make. She is really cute when you ask her to show you what a chicken does. She flaps both of her arms and makes a noise close to "bock".
It's been over a year since Sarah was born and I still remember the moment as vividly as if it were this morning. I'm sure there are parts that Karen would not like to remember, like the b**ch of an OB we had, or the discomfort of the delivery experience, but all in all, I think it was the best experience of our lives.
I was reading an article on MSNBC today by a new father, talking about the anxieties he had before his wife delivered, and I was taken back to what I had felt in the months leading up to the birth of Sarah. I remember my fear of all the blood and watching my wife go through agonizing pain, and wondering if I would be upright or passed out when she was born. It's a scary thing to face! As time progressed, and I realized how much help I was to my wife with the pain management and the encouragement, my fears began to subside. I can still remember seeing my daughters head begin to poke through and my reaction. It brought me to tears, I was so excited and happy at that moment.
I know one thing that made a world of difference for me was the education that our Bradley classes provided. I believe had we not gone through the classes, and just went with a quick Lamaze class, I would have missed what is now the most memorable and life altering event I have ever been through.
Late last week, presumably at school, Sarah started on the path to walking independently. She is now able to stand on her own for a short period of time, upwards of 30 seconds as she demonstrated last night. She can also go from standing to taking a few steps, but she get's too excited and her top gets going faster than her legs, and she falls over. She is not a patient person, like her father :) She also showed us last night that she can push herself up from sitting to standing, without any outside help or anything to hold onto. We were all clapping when she did this and she had quite the confused look on her face, it was soo cute.
It's been hard to get pictures of her standing because she just wants the camera, and of course, the easiest way to get it is to crawl. I'll see what I can get and post them when I do.