Blog | 22 Months!
M is growing and changing by leaps and bounds these days. You can’t really tell, but the reason M is running in this picture is because she is chasing after B…as usual. She LOVES her big sister. Loves to play with her, loves to chase after her, loves to hear her read stories, loves to talk to her…doesn’t always love to share with her, but she is working on it.
M is rarely without her favorite buddies…all five of them (Nemo, Fishy (she won him at the fair), Mickey, Baby, and Pooh), which she carries all at once. If we’d let her, she’d take them everywhere…all five of them. Fortunately, she is usually fairly reasonable about just taking one or two out of the house, and rarely complains if I ask her to leave those in the car. Much harder to lose them that way…
She loves to sing, and she especially loves to sing with us. If B is singing a song she knows, she sings along. Same with Jason or me. She also often demands certain songs. Favorites include Kenzie-poo (sung to the Batman theme), A-B-C, Shake Your Sillies Out, Snuggly-Snuggly, I Love my Baby Girls, and Little One. While in the car, she typically demands the “na-na-na-na song (Pink’s So What), and then gets mad when they don’t sing na-na-na-na the whole time. I think I need to introduce her to Hey Jude, but I’m still scarred from when B made us listen to that several hundred times one year.
She almost has her ABC’s down (sings them all clearly except G-H-I-J-K), and just tonight I heard her count to 10 (she counted one number each time I took a step up the stairs). Her vocabulary is improving greatly, though she still sometimes reverts to pointing and grunting. It is sometimes hard to figure out what she is trying to say, but we usually figure it out eventually. B is often quite helpful. She says things like “more turkey here please” while pointing at her tray, “Daddy mano” (which means he should come to her/follow her), “more bik peas” (more milk please), “daddy uhstairs” (Daddy upstairs), “pay cars” (play cars), “mommy! go now!” (she can be impatient about leaving when it is time to leave…), “baby nigh-night,” “bi kickel” (bicycle), “B-B ah cool” (B-B at school), etc. And she can say her name fairly well – no small feat! She seems to understand most things that we tell her, but like B at this age, she pretty much says yes to every question we ask her, so…
She has a bit of a temper, and I can easily visualize many full-blown temper tantrums (i.e., lay down on the floor kicking and screaming) in the future. Typically, this happens either when one of us does not understand what she wants, when one of us does something differently than she wants, or when one of us takes something from her. The latter is unlikely to change (as that is usually part of a punishment when she is not listening), but I suspect the other two will improve as she is gets better at communicating her needs/wants to us.
She is very good at putting the correct shape in the correct spot (and has been for a while), but is not quite able to pick the correct shape when I ask her for a particular one (e.g., give me the triangle). She recognizes some colors consistently (yellow, purple, pink, and green), with her favorite seeming to be purple, but she is indifferent to/uninterested in the others.
Her favorite characters right now (by far) are Lightning McQueen, Mater, Pooh, Mickey (or Minnie – she doesn’t differentiate), and Ariel, and thus she generally picks books that has at least one of those characters in it. She loves books and her stuffed animals, and has quickly followed in her sister’s footsteps re: demanding books and buddies in her crib each night.
She generally wants to do things herself (e.g., pick out her shoes, brush her teeth, go up the stairs, buckle pretty much any buckle, bundle her baby, etc.) and has even managed to put her pants on by herself a time or two. Here she is with B on Thanksgiving wearing her cute Thanksgiving dress (that we put on her) and her jammie pants (that she put on all by herself).
She insisted they stay on! She generally picks her own shoes, often preferring her squeakers over pretty much any other pair. I have a sneaking suspicion she does not like turtle necks. While I have been able to get her to keep them on once I put them on her, she fights me quite vigorously when I try to put them on. B can’t stand turtle necks, so perhaps they both are like that (which puts them squarely in Jason’s camp on this subject). She loves wearing jackets, and usually has pretty strong opinions about which ones she wears at any given time…and which hat she wears with them, of course…and whether they should be zipped…heaven help you if you don’t read her mind and get it right the first time!
She still sleeps great at night and during naps. When she wakes up from naps, she generally sings and looks at her books until she is ready to get up. Note: she naps in the room by herself. When she wakes up in the morning, however, she wants B’s attention, and she will go to great lengths (much to my, Jason’s, and B’s dismay) to get it, including throwing her stuff out of her crib and demanding B get it for her. So, mornings often start earlier than they likely would if they were in different rooms. BUT, both girls really seem to like being in the same room together. If B is not in there with her at night when she goes to bed, she is sad and confused.
She is not always interested in me taking her picture or capturing her cuteness on video, but when she does choose to cooperate she will pose – even go so far to walk over to our “photo wall” and wait patiently while I take the picture. But, I am at her whim these days with this, so pictures are not always a given. Enjoy these two!
