Niko Alyse

Niko Alyse, my daughter! It still feels a little funny saying that after having two boys, I have a daughter! She is much different than the boys. My boys both talked early but neither one walked till 14 months. Niko started getting places by rolling at three months and army crawling by four months and hasn't stopped moving! She started walking around by holding on to furniture at 7.5 months and is now standing alone but has decided crawling is still the safest way to travel but I can tell she is thinking about walking. She is into EVERYTHING! The boys started getting into things about 1.5 or 2 but not this girl! Even though she is very curious she is proving to be pretty obedient. She can say! mamma, dadda, hi and bye clearly. She attempts lots of words and says somethings that only we( her family) can understand. I have taught her some sign language as well. People who meet her think she is a very quiet and serious child because I have only seen her smile at one " stranger ". She is a friend I see about twice a month. If she doesn't know you you can do anything and she will just make you feel foolish for trying so hard. At home Niko is a different person! A ham just like her brothers! Very vocal and always trying to get a reaction out of us! She LOVES her brothers,and they share the same feeling! She wrestles with Zane and pulls his hair so hard he surrenders.... that one not so funny,we at working on being gentle! This week we made big steps in improving communication. She loves to growl to get what she wants. For the last month I have been working with her to use her signs especially at meal time. She will be done eating and instead of saying "all done" or signing it she growls loudly! Very loud, not cute, but funny when she first stared! So she sits very quietly while eating all her food an without fail let's out a very loud growl, waits for me to acknowledge her and then...she smiles! I calmly quiet her and say " are you all done?" While signing it as well. She smiles and says " a duh" for all done. But my work paid off and yesterday she finished her food and was about to growl she stopped, looked down at her hands and signed " all done" while grinning ear to ear. For the last three meals she has continued to be polite :-) she is so proud of herself as am I ! I love how much she understands and works so hard to figure things out at such a young age. She is such an amazing baby! There I'm done for now my iPad is driving me nuts and when I try to correct punctuation or fix anything it won't let me... so there you have it, run on sentences and a tumbled paragraph later. Good thing I'm writing this for me, because my memory is so bad I couldn't remember a thing if I didn't write it down to read later!