Larkyn 20 months

 Larkyn will be 20 months tomorrow, and while this is not a particularly big milestone, I will take the opportunity to include a few updates.  Larkyn is continuing to grow in obedience and conversation, and she is growing more fun everyday.  She is starting to be able to play more with the big kids instead of just messing up their things.  Paul and I both remark that she has incredibly good tone - and even if we can't understand all of the word she is singing we know what song she is singing based on her melody and rhythm.  She loves to sing!  One of her favorites is singing "Elmo's song" - and Paul and I couldn't help laughing out loud as we listened to her belt it out in the car on the way home from church!  I'll have to catch it on video sometime :).  Below is a video of her singing her ABC's which she sings all the time!  It is especially fun to hear her singing it on the baby monitor when she wakes up in the morning!

Larkyn ABC's video


She is getting quite good at her letters and can always identify L and W, and often many, many more.  She can pretty consistently identify blue, green, yellow, purple and black and is getting better at pink and red.  Anytime the kids and I are counting something, Larkyn will jump right in and count too.  Here is a little video of her counting to 10 (skipping 4). 

Larkyn counts to 10 video


Probably the biggest thing that happened this month, however, was that Larkyn switched from calling herself "Na-Na" (which she has been doing from probably at least 6 months) to a form of "Larkyn".  I couldn't believe it - as we were checking the kids into the kids program at church yesterday, we matched nametags with each kid, asking "Whose nametag is this?" to each kid.  In response, she said "Larkyn" instead of "Na-Na".  I'm not sure what made the switch, but it has been pretty consistent since that moment!  Here is a video of what she now calls herself:



Larkyn is a little girl in ACTION.  She hardly ever sits still unless she is sleepy and is cuddling with her blanket.  She is similar to Colton, where when we work on letters or colors, we place objects on one side of the room and destinations for the object on the other so that she is constantly walking with each item as we discuss it!  She is full of energy and smiles!  She did have her first VERY long (30+ minute) tantrum this week, refusing to clean up her toys before dinner, and thus did not join us for dinner until partway through...however she eventually cleaned them up!  Overall, she is getting much better at following directions.  Today on errands she did a great job of standing by mommy and not touching the things she saw. 

Two of her new "Larkyn-isms" this month are saying "O-kaaaay" to everything in her cute little voice and loving to put on everyone's shoes and walk all over the house in them, including Colton's church shoes, Summer's pink cowgirl boots, Mommy's boots, and Daddy's slippers.

Whenever I am with her, Larkyn always makes me so happy with her smiles, giggles, and silly faces - I am seriously so in love with her.