Development and recent events (by her mommy, Carol) Walking, starting to run, not jumping yet Freya has been walking since Jan. 1997. She is still going to physical therapy to increase her muscle strength. She has made great "strides" in the last year. The doctors still don't know what is the cause of her hypotonia. Reading and counting She loves to be read to and will sometimes read books back to us. She has "read" most of several books to us. Like most toddlers, she loves to have the same book read over and over until it is memorized. We can tell that she reads a lot of words by "sight". She knows what each word on the inside cover of Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss is. (Maybe she can read a little bit. :) ) She loves books that rhyme and she loves just rhyming for fun. One of her latest favorite books, Piggy in the Puddle, is also a rhyming book about a piggy who doesn't want to get out of the mud and "needs some soap". Freya liked to rhyme words with soap and so came up with "squope". We don't know what it means but we're proud. One day, one of our neighbors' 12+ cats was following Freya around on our walk and tried to get into our house. Knowing Freya likes rhymes, I said "scat cat" and now all cats are scat cats. On a recent trip through Michigan, Freya's Grammy and I were keeping her busy by writing numbers on her Magna Doodle and she wanted more numbers, so we kept going up to 100. In the above-mentioned song, And one and two, they count only up to eight and Freya also asked for more, but I always stopped at 100. One day last August we were walking on the pier and the numbers on the pylons had 3 digits. Fritz decided that Freya needed to know how to read 3 digit numbers and so he taught her and she's been doing it ever since. She surprised her Bobe and Zadie (my mom & dad) by reading the 3 digit number of their hotel room (and reading the ones down the hallway to get to it.) She'll still tell you their room number (months later now) if you ask. Singing songs She has recently started to sing some songs herself - Inchworm and the ABCs (she likes the way Sharon, Lois and Bram do it best). Fun Stuff She likes to help us make pancakes– her favorite food. She knows all the ingredients (we make them from scratch) and will keep herself up at night reciting them in the bed after "light's out". One time she said "baking soda" instead of "baking powder" and so we gently corrected her. She later said baking soda again in listing the ingredients but this time when you looked in her eyes you could see that she was doing it on purpose for fun. We would then say "not for our pancakes" and she would giggle and giggle. (By way of explanation, in one of her books, a baby gets a puff of powder after his bath but we would always say "not for this baby" since we never powdered her.) Just tonight she was staying awake by alternating "absolutely, positively" and "absitively, posolutely" and giggling in between. Her favorite toy is her Daddy who loves to make up silly games and songs with her. Other Stuff She has just started potty learning and is doing very well. Back to Daddy's home page: