20 Months

ND turned twenty months old yesterday!

Twenty things about her:

1. She hugs trees with me now. "Ug! Ug!" she says then goes up, puts her arms and cheeks against it. She still usually refers to trees as "fowers" but she does repeat after me when I say, "Hug tree."

2. She has so many new words! Almost none are exactly the way the words should ultimately sound, and I can't keep track of everything... but here are a bunch she uses regularly:
luh=look
ba'=bag
ugh=hug
fower=flower, also tree and any other shrubs or grass
Mommy=Mommy
Da Da=Dad
houf=house
ball ball=ball
bo-bo = boo-boo (as on one's head after bumping it)
bubby=bunny
buh-bye = bug bite
bye-bye=bye-bye
baby=baby
the names of all the kids from camp

She also tells me long sentences about things but I have to guess what they're about.

3. She sometimes calls us by our names. U. more often than me because she hears me shouting up or down the stairs to him all the time and then repeats his name with a mischievous smile. She learned my name by listening to the other campers and their families as well as sometimes U., I guess.

4. She has a crooked sideways smile that constantly floors me. I keep thinking I'm seeing my father's father smiling at me.

5. "Terrible twos" is apparently a misnomer. My doctor confirms that it is really more like 1 and a half. I try not to complain about it too much. The main issue is that she does stomp her foot to get her way and for too long I gave in. Now I won't at all.

6. We still sleep together and I still love it. Especially when I think about how many hours I'll be away from her when the year starts again, I'm grateful to be doing up-close "nighttime parenting" as Dr. Sears calls it.

7. She loves to help me with laundry, moving clothes from washer to dryer or dryer to hampers or whatever. In an effort to save time and sanity, I no longer put laundry away in our closets most of the time, but instead hang up wrinklable clothes before they go in the dryer, and then sort the rest of the clean stuff out into individual baskets. She actually often knows whose things are whose! She won't put it in the right basket, but she will say who it belongs to.

8. The same skill applies at camp. She loves helping us out which means she stacks up the bowls after snack without being asked, AND she often gives kids their sippy cups. Yes, she knows whose are whose! What's especially remarkable about this is that several of the cups change day to day! We have many colors of cups and the lids are labeled. So a child may have green today but yellow tomorrow and still she can get it right by the end of the day!

9. So yes, she knows whose cups are whose, but that doesn't prevent her from having a little sip before handing it over.

10. She loves to run-run-run-run-run. (Yes, those are fairy wings.) And yes, she says "ruh-ruh-ruh..." as she's doing it.



11. We continue to nurse often. Another pro-breastfeeding mom asked me yesterday if I can imagine not doing it, or imagine wanting to try to wean ND. I said, "Why would I give up the most efficient and diverse tool I have? Besides being a sweet and intimate experience, if she's hungry, we nurse, annoyed by bug bites, we nurse, jealous of other kids playing with me, we nurse, sleepy, we nurse...

12. She carries a little purse now that her Savta gave her. She loves it so much that even if she falls asleep in the stroller she reaches for it. Unfortunately, when she came home last night from her babysitter's house, there was an object in the purse that doesn't belong to us. We'll just have to keep an eye on that.


13. If she hears my phone ringing or wants to hear music, she does a little dance and says, "Do do do do do," singing a little ditty until I do it with her or turn on something else.

14. She has the most AWESOME giggle.

15. I've been writing this summary throughout the week. So last night, on the actual night of the 20 month birthday, something kind of weird happened. She didn't take her afternoon nap, then fell asleep around 6 in the evening. I had to leave for a meeting/dinner with my supervisor and team from regular work in preparation for the school year. She awoke shortly after I left and apparently WOULD NOT STOP CRYING. U. called me after she'd been crying nonstop for 45 minutes. I could not leave at that point, and then when I finally did leave, I got lost on the way home. When I finally got there she'd been crying almost for 2 full hours. She felt better after I got home and we nursed and hung out a little, but then she began a tantrum for me as well. I got her a new baby doll and baby doll carrier yesterday and I didn't hold it just right for her and she threw herself on the floor. Again, the only thing that would console her as I got ready to go to bed with her was brushing her teeth, but she kept wanting more and more of that sweet toothpaste. When I said no, that it might make her tummy hurt, on the floor again screaming. Let's see how today goes. And in the future, I'll make sure to say goodbye if I'm going out.

16. She does have a mischievous side and I haven't figured out quite the formula yet for her to understand, "No!" as she usually smiles at me when I do it. If it's really serious, I've sometimes had to say it so sternly that she cries, but I don't like that either. Usually if I completely redirect her and say "no" several times consecutively, she gets it. Twice now, only twice, I've actually confined her to the pack and play for a few minutes. The first time for messing with the outlet covers, the second time for biting me repeatedly and "playfully." I leave her there for just a moment, then tell her if she wants to stay out of there, she can't do the behavior. Then we move on.

17. Everything is a phone now. Remote controls, computer mouse, and of course real phones go to her ear and she says, "ello ello." I try to avoid her doing that with real phones when they are on on as they apparently may cause brain tumors eventually!

18. Oddly enough she has started to develop certain fears she never had... dogs and water primarily. She doesn't mind dogs from a distance but doesn't like to touch them, and now our cat startles her sometimes instead of making her crack up laughing. And she doesn't like either the wading pool or bath, but does enjoy the water table. I think she'll grow out of it.

19. During camp she is very quiet. One of my assistants commented that he never hears her. I think she's just not listening hard enough because I hear her all the time, but then again, maybe not during camp so much. She's talkative with people she knows well and not as much with others. She also needs a translator sometimes.

20. Curls, beautiful curls that are becoming more blond than red now.