Entries from June 2010 ↓

Before naptime we were reading the book Oops! by David Shannon.
The last page has the word “Mama” on it and shows David asleep against his mother’s chest in her arms. When we got to that page, Ezri looked at the illustration and said, “Mama!” and gave me a big hug just like David.

Good thing she doesn’t know this sort of behavior makes me want to give her anything she’d like – even cookies.

Ezri likes to identify the parts of her body.
One of her favorite new words is fingers.
Her favorite games include “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and “This Little Piggy.”

So, it isn’t any wonder that the following books were hits with her.

A First Book All About You: Eyes, Nose, Fingers and Toes by Judy Hindley
The book explains the uses of different body parts. “Legs are for kicking.” “Feet are for STOMPING and suddenly – STOPPING!”
“Hands are to hold and pat and CLAP!” You get the idea. The accompanying illustrations by Brita Granstrom have enough detail to be interesting without so much detail that Ezri is overwhelmed. You will have to move and clap while reading the text, but that’s much of the fun.

My First Body Board Book by DK
This title begins with photos of babies with body parts labeled. Then there is a spread of different babies’ faces and another with different babies’ hair. There are pages with babies exploring using their sense. Ezri’s favorite is a baby tasting a cookie. She has now tasted cookies and likes to say, “cookie.” There is a page with photos of baby clothing to point at and identify. This is all around a good title to browse and talk about together.

Look at You! A Baby Body Book by Kathy Henderson was an early favorite of Ezri’s and is now back after a break as a fun book to look through. I discussed it first in this post.

Ezri looks out the window and asks, “Dada Sue?”
which means “Is Eric coming home soon?”

Ezri tried to get on the motorbike by herself, but found it to be a challenge.

Big E and little e on our front steps.

We’re headed to the park to visit the swings.

Remember last year?

Where is Baby? by Sally Rippin
There’s not much to this board book in the text. Each spread asks the question, “Where is the baby?” and then answers it. Babies are on chairs, in toy trains, playing games, and snuggled in bed. The joy of this book for Ezri is the illustrations which are simple, brightly colored paintings. There is a cockatiel who Ezri calls “twee twee.” This is her noise for bird, but has also been applied to bats and butterflies. The baby in the pictures has a ball and a teddy bear both words Ezri can say. When we turn to the train page, Ezri smiles and says, “choo choo.” This book is a perfect book to talk about and ask Ezri to talk to me about. On one page there is a baby who is under a blanket. Since Ezri loves blanket peekaboo, she also loves pointing at this illustration. It’s nice that this book is so slight on the text that we can actually read through the whole thing in the length of Ezri’s attention span.

Reading with her dad.

They make a good pair.

This is Ezri’s first time at this acorn shaped play structure at the Morton Arboretum back in October of last year at around 8 months. I’d put her in the acorn and she’d sit and smile and look around maybe try some crawling.

This is her today in the acorn. She runs around to the back of the acorn and then runs through it (or slides through it or sometimes crawls through). She’s bigger and faster and still fabulous.

And when I think how truly amazing the difference is I remind myself she has doubled in age between these two visits.

Ezri demands “UP!”
If she really wanted to be carried, she could try looking adorable instead of grumpy when she asks. I’m just saying.