Shoshanna's Second Passover

Shoshanna had great fun for the last couple of days having not two but FIVE grownups all to herself! Our friends Lisa, Troy, and Ben came to visit for Passover. We had a great seder on Wednesday night, and Shoshanna played happily in her high chair for the first half of the ceremony and most of dinner. By the end of dinner she had gotten sick of the high chair (where she spent the pre-dinner portion of seder coloring) and was getting prety tired and cranky, so we took a break to put her to bed and then did the second half of the ceremony. It worked out really well, and she loved the 4 questions finger puppets that one of L's co-workers had bought for her. :^D

Shoshanna's not a big fan of plain matzo (and really... who is?), but she'll happily eat tam tams (matzo crackers) and passover cereal, so we're all set there. Oh, and she loves maccaroons and haroset (the latter of which we're limiting her intake of, since we did make it with wine - not a lot, but you can definitely tell it's there).

Thursday we went up to Niagara Falls to wander about - it was a GORGEOUS day. We didn't let Shoshanna out of the stroller (unless she was being carried) when we were near the falls themselves, but we did turn her loose to stomp around, stick her fingers in the mud, and chase
seagulls. (Squealing all the while.)

There's nothing like having an early intervention occupational therapist come to your house to visit for a couple of days to kick you into trying to teach your slightly speech-delayed toddler to sign. (Her receptive language - what she understands - is FANTASTIC, but she has a vocabulary of 3 spoken words (hi, bye, uh-oh) and a few signs - she nods yes, waves (but also says "hi" and "bye" ) and she holds her hands in a particular way when she wants up or to be handed to a certain person. She uses "da" for Matthew and "ma" for me inconsistently, and has lately been labeling objects that start with "b" universally as "bah".) So Lisa gave us some helpful suggestions (and prodded us about pushing for speech and language therapy with early intervention) the biggest of which (and I'm sure she'll chime in here and remind me if I'm getting this wrong) were to slow down and give Shoshanna single words to imitate and to encourage her to sign. We're just so used to her understanding more complex sentences and instructions!

Anyway, within about 10 minutes, she had spontanously signed "more" and she's been mimicking us signing "eat" and "milk" as well as the first sounds of some of our words. She invented her own sign for "wash", too (rubbing her hands together). She's getting pretty frustrated with us, though, because we're insisting on doing this silly mumbojumbo with our hands before we give her what she wants. And to add insult to injury, we're trying to make HER do the mumbojumbo, too! We're so mean.

Oh, and she spontaneously barked at a dog on TV yesterday morning and a cat on TV this morning (hey, it's furry and it's got four legs...).