Amanda Panda

Today I thought I would write about my little Amanda Panda. She is getting so big and she's not quite a baby anymore. She rough and tumbly and loves to wrestle with her big brother, but she can also be sweet and cuddly at the same time. She's a lot more of a cudddler than Micah was, and a lot less busy too!

Amanda's starting to do a lot of role playing and it's so darn cute. Well, most of the time it's cute. When she can't get the pacifier back into her baby dolls mouth she throws it. That is... she throws her baby doll, and keeps the pacifier. Honestly, this action is not learned behavior from our parenting techniques either. She also loves to act like she's talking on the phone. Now this is most likely a learned behavior from me, myself and I. Another thing she loves to do and does rather well, is dribble kick her little soccer ball around the house. I think we might have another little soccer star in our family. ;0)


Amanda's speech is still not up to par for her age. Speech therapy is going to be in our near future if she's not saying clear,defined words by her second birthday (4 more months to go). I'm trying really hard not to compare Micah's speech with hers, but it's tough. Micah was an early talker and by 20 months he was saying clear 3-5 word phrases. Amanda says several words that we understand (and no one else can), but the one word that Amanda does say clearly and often is 'shoes'. The girl is obsessed with them! Amanda is always trying to put her shoes on, and she hates having them taken off. I think she would sleep through the night with them on if we let her. Anyways, the other day while walking through the shoe department at Nordstrom Rack, Amanda began signing 'more' and saying 'shoes' over and over again. So I looked at her and asked, "Do you want more shoes?" She shook her head yes while again signing 'more' and saying the word 'shoes'. It's nice to know I'll always have a shoe shopping partner!