All about Corrina

Corrina is almost 1.5! Wow... she is such a smarty pants, so adorable, a social butterfly, and sweet too!

We had a great trip to the beach with our friends from church last week. This family has two boys who we totally love hanging out with. They are brilliant guys. The awesome part is that they love hanging out with us too, especially Corrina. It's nice that she has 'big brothers' in her life!
Corrina, to my surprise, did not like swimming. I would take her in holding her against my chest and she would cry and squirm. When she saw anyone we were with swimming she would start to freak out, whether we were in the water or not. I think she had some feeling that maybe they weren't safe. She was so upset for about 20 minutes and I eventually just had to get Dave to come out of the water. It was very bizzare. Finally Corrina found her grove on top of Dave's shoulders, with only a bit of her in the water. It felt funny to arrange our whole day around her being happy at the beach, but we just wanted her to enjoy herself.


Today at the grocery store while I was loading our food onto the conveyor belt Corrina, from her seat in the cart, turned around and started handing me everything and anything she could reach (think superstore carts that have that elevated part behind the child spot)! She lifted cans, salad dressings, and a big box of yogurt. What a buff and helpful little girl. I was blown away at her ability to lift and her helpfulness.

Corrina loves to imitate everything we do. When I am in the bathroom she likes to brush her hair when I do mine, wash her face, brush her teeth, and yes, use the powder brush to put her 'makeup' on.

Corrina wanted to help me dust the other day. I guess she thought I wasn't doing a good enough job. She focused in on one area in the house, herself!


We work on certain sounds everyday with Corrina called linge sounds. These sounds let us know that she is hearing speech at every frequency. We play a little game with one of the sounds and her baby. Mommy says "Shhhhh, time to go to sleep" and I put my finger to my mouth to say shhhhh. Today I was just saying it to Corrina from behind around naptime when she turned around to face to face and put her finger to her lip! I thought maybe she's just pointing to her nose so I tried again when she was facing away again. As soon as I made the SHHHHH noise she flung around, smiled, and put her finger to her lip! This means not only is she hearing noises (and quite high frequency ones at that), but she is learning that sounds have meaning and she can associate them with actions! This is a big step.

We are also seeing her turn to her name a little more. We have been focusing on teaching her animals noises because let's face it, mooo, baaaa, wooof, roar, and me-ow make up the majority of beginning sounds. We were playing with a monkey and a cow yesterday, saying eeeeee, and mooooo. After playing for a bit we put them each on opposite sides of her high chair tray and asked her "Where is moooo, moooo?" You bet, she pointed at the cow! We tried again with the monkey sound and she pointed to the monkey. After that she stopped pointing to the rght animal, but we like to think she was just getting bored with us. We are so thrilled to see her learning and caring about sounds. The feeling is incredible.
That's all for today, Corrina has just awoke!