Morgan Dahl

Organizing…

per Jim’s comment below, Morgan spent the latter portion of her bath this evening tracking down every toy in the bath and putting them all back in their basket.  This is a fair number of toys, probably 15-20.  It was pretty amazing.

New skill and talking / verbal skills

Instead of just ripping books off shelves and knocking over towers of blocks, Morgan began trying to organize things this weekend.  She’ll “clean up” by putting toys in her wagon, try to put books back on the shelf (after pulling them off), and try stacking blocks.  These organizational behaviors are all new.  It strikes me as pretty significant that she began interacting with her environment in a way other than just grabbing interesting things, pushing buttons, etc…

She’s been quite a talker for months, with a variety of sounds — da, ma, ra.  This week we’ve decided she pretty reliable says “da”, “dad”, or “dada” when she sees me.  She also makes the same sound when I’m not around, so it was difficult to determine that it’s really a word, but it seems to be.  It’s also been tricky determining if she understands any words.  She sometimes turns when we say “Morgan”, but it’s not clear she knows the word.  However, this weekend it also became apparent that she claps when we say “yay”, suggesting she recognizes the word.

The O.C.

Morgan’s first vacation at the beach was a fabulous Memorial Day weekend at Ocean City.  Molly and I had been planning the trip for some time for the three of us, but grandparents Wetzel recently offered to meet us and help watch Morgan.

11 months old today

There has been a lot going on this week, from a Morgan aging perspective.

We got her transition date from daycare for the move to the Toddler 1 room.  Her transition week begins July 6 and she will be in the Toddler 1 room full-time beginning July 13.  There are several changes associated with this.  One, they are starting to feed Morgan a snack in the afternoon at daycare.  Two, she now has hard soled shoes, as she need to be wearing shoes all the time before moving rooms.  And three, in a month (or possibly a little sooner) they are going to move her to one nap a day.  She’ll go down at 12:30 and stay down/in her crib until 3 (or something like that).

Once she’s in the Toddler 1 room, she’ll be taking most of her milk from a sippy cup.  They only do one bottle a day, right before naptime.  They fill the sippy cups and bottles with cow’s milk for us.  All we have to do is bring in a single empty bottle every day.  Of course, this means we are going to need to transition her to cow’s milk before then.

She looks so cute in her shoes! (though she doesn’t seem to love them yet.)  I’m sure we’ll get a picture posted soon.  I can’t believe that in a month she’ll be a year old. Amazing.

Stairs

Morgan took pretty instantly to the stairs at Uncle John’s house last weekend.  She was able to go both up and down without much effort.  Here’s her descending about 7-8 steps.

She can steer her wagon!

Morgan can actually steer her wagon.  She is by no means perfect, but she can turn wide corners.  And if she inadvertantly slams it into something she can turn it in place to get it pointed a different direction and take off again.  She can do a 180 in a pretty tight space.

Unbelievable.

Morgan’s Game

Morgan has discovered a game she likes to play.  She’ll tilt her head to one side, touching her ear to her shoulder (roughly) and then stare at you.  If you tilt your head to the side in the same way she’ll smile and laugh.  She’ll then straighten her head and tilt it back or to the other side.  You mimic her again, she smiles/laughs again.  Too cute.

She has also gotten much better at standing.  She still needs some support, but not much.  We are supposed to be getting her some shoes with hard soles for daycare.

And she has gotten much better at finger dexterity.  She has actually started pushing buttons with just one finger, as opposed to just slamming her whole hand down in the general area of the button.  Pretty crazy.

Weekend to Minneapolis

Morgan enjoyed going to Minneapolis for a long weekend to Uncle John’s house.  Grandparents Dahl came over from South Dakota, and Morgan got to meet lots of extended family on Grandma Dahl’s side at a family reunion barbeque Saturday afternoon.

Mother’s Day

Photo catchup

These are from last week…