Entries from May 2010 ↓

Ezri is picking up heaps of words.
Her new playground vocabulary include “schweeng” for swing
“pah” for park
“baaah” for ball
“weeeee” for slide

Hop, Skip, Jump: A Very First Picture Book by Nicola Tuxworth:
This book has photos of young children (up to about 5 years old) moving. There’s marching, skipping, jumping, throwing and other styles of movement. What Ezri likes best about this book is pointing to body parts. She loves to say “knee” lately as it is one of her more accurately pronounced words. This means pointing out the knees in these photos is particularly fun. She also points to the hair, eyes, bellies and toes of the children in the photos. The photographs are great for this game where I ask her to “point to an ear.” She points to an ear. Then I ask her to “point to a mouth.” The game goes on until she is bored and onto other things. The children photographed in the book are racially diverse. The backgrounds have been edited out of the photos so the children stand against a white background which makes it easy to focus on the children and leaves an uncluttered page. This clean design seems easier for Ezri. There are other titles in the series we will have to check out including Food, Funny Faces, Baby Animals, Splish Splash, Wild Animals, Kittens, Machines at Work, and Farm Animals.

Ezri realizes sound comes out of the earbuds which she had previously supposed were for chewing.

Today we skype video chatted with Grandma Tam and Grandpa Mark. While Ezri was disappointed she could not hand her grandparents a hat for them to try on, she did enjoy seeing them and clearly she gets much more out of interacting in video chat than she would out of a phone call. She pointed at her nose and the grandparents pointed at their noses. She clapped and they clapped. They were like putty in her hands or on her viewscreen, I suppose. The grandparents were also shown “tick tock” a game we learned from our friend Charles. Eric was inspired to video this instance of tick tock.

Lately, when Ezri is not quite certain about what is going on or what is being asked of her, she makes a face her father and I affectionately call “stink face.” Here is Ezri’s stink face caught on camera.

Ezri in the Hamill Family Play Zoo. This is the area where kids can pretend to be zoo vets. She is using a ball syringe on the nose of an armadillo. She also wanted to use it on her own nose, but I convinced her the armadillo was a better idea.

We spent quite awhile playing with a photo booth that would put an animal border around your photo. It had buttons to push and a curtain to play peek-a-boo. I even decided to give in and buy a photo after 20 minutes of playing in the photo booth. The photo isn’t great (a low pixel photo of Ezri and I with a lion border) but the photo booth play time was worth it. Ezri liked it when the booth talked to us and the buttons made noises which made it worth having fed the machine money.

This is her happily sitting on the booth bench.

Behind the Play Zoo, there is a sandbox. This was Ezri’s first time in a sandbox which she really enjoyed. The sand was a bit damp from the rain, shoveling it and crushing it were no less fun for its dampness.

The sandbox is surrounded by lilacs which smelled great and were a good bonus.

Two things that excited Ezri very much this zoo visit were this dustpan & hand broom:

and these goslings:

Grapes on a stick = awesome

Empty stick = not so cool

Though how mature Ezri is in her eating habits is questionable.

Yesterday:
Duck feeding. Last week she thought duck food might be a snack for her. This week she knows how to drop it off the bridge for the ducks.

Swine viewing:

Bench sharing with Charlotte:

Last week’s visit with the gang:

Sure, all those photos are of the back of kids’ heads, but aren’t they cute anyway?

This morning Ezri climbed up onto a chair at the table at breakfast time. I think she is ready to be out of the high chair and eat right at the table. She did a great job using a plate at the table this morning for her banana and bagel breakfast.