20 Months

This month has been a big one developmentally for Baby Girl!  It feels like she's grown and learned so much just in the last month.

Just this past weekend I discovered teeth #9 and #10 poking through, her top molars!  She's still pretty behind, but that's okay.  Hoping this will decrease the crankiness, but who knows...

Went to a Japanese steak house with Baby Girl for the first time and she really enjoyed it.  She ate a TON of the food and didn't seem bothered by the fire.  She just looked and said "fire".  The chef was really nice and warned us and asked if it was okay to do the fire and interacted with the kids well (we went with a couple of good friends and their little boy). 

I think morning nursing is done.  Last weekend Baby Girl asked for oatmeal and didn't even ask for milk once she saw me.  She was happy enough to read her book.  The Hubby takes her on downstairs for oatmeal instead of having her nurse unless she asks for milk and now hasn't nursed in the morning since last Saturday.  When she has nursed last week , she'd thrown an absolute fit when we "poly-ed" (as in rolly poly (how the heck do you spell that???)) from right to left.  She'll point to righty and whine "miiiiillkkk".  I have started to try to get excited about coming back for more with "lefty", so she'll say "efty" and doesn't get as upset now.

Baby Girl has started wanting to do things "self"--the most prevalent being the stairs.  She wants to take them standing up and always tells us that she doesn't want help, so we just tell her we're spotting her as we stand down a step or two.  She does a pretty good job all of a sudden--it definitely isn't something that we've pushed her to start doing.

We went through a period of waking between 4:45 and 5:30, which is too early on any morning.  Once it was happening consistently, we knew something needed to change, so we pushed her bedtime back closer to 8:00.  It cuts into our "us" time, but it's nice spending more time with her and feeling less rushed in the evenings.  Maybe we'll actually start getting her bathed more often!  This will be really useful once we get back outside and start jogging again.  After changing her bedtime by just about a half hour, though, she started sleeping until close to 7:00, which is too late on weekdays!  We're working on a happy medium :)

She's also been learning like crazy!  She can count to 10 if we get her to say 4 after 3 (she likes to say 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 and gets stuck in a loop).  She also suddenly knows pretty much all her colors about 85% of the time.  She can tell us strings of letters (usually G through L) and can recognize letters (definitely E and O and some others some days). 

We have to go bus-hunting some days.  She LOVES busses and will point them out everywhere.  And some days she'll get cranky if we don't see any, so I've told her they're all sleeping.  So now when we see one, she'll say "wake!".  So lucky we could find one that's awake. 

Late this month Baby Girl has also started becoming more interested in the TV.  We don't typically turn it on and they only watch it at the sitter's during drop-off, so she doesn't know many TV shows.  She really likes Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and loved Spongebob until we pulled the plug on it.  I will sometimes turn on Fresh Beat Band in the evening (it's hard to find cartoons at that time) and we'll watch Chuggington (about trains) On Demand sometimes.  But generally it's just background noise while she's playing.  More recently, though, she's actually sat on the couch and watched almost a full episode of Special Agent Oso or Handy Manny with me.  She'll ask about her "toons" and we'll typically oblige.

Loves:  Singing ("Happy Birthday", "Pider" (Itsy Bitsy Spider), "Happy" (If You're Happy and You Know It), "Bus" (The Wheels on the Bus), dancing (we have regular dance parties now, especially to Glee music), bathtime, vegetables (multiple times this week she's asked for more corn, peas, green beans, carrots, and broccoli), cookies, "toast" (bread), Mommy, Daddy, babies, friends, hugs, kisses (she even makes the little smacking sound now--adorable!), jammies, animal sounds, counting, letters, colors, busses, jumping on the couch, walking

Dislikes: Not getting her way, not having Mommy or Daddy's attention, cow milk (she doesn't hate it, but definitely doesn't drink it like water), some meats sometimes, riding in the car, being strapped into a stroller