Twenty-One Month Recap

Feeling like herself again after a nasty virus

Doing her best to play despite a fever and sore throat

After applying sunscreen all by herself (she LOVES sunscreen).
Not sure if she's felled by the virus or the sunscreen.

Scooter and purple shirt from Grammy

Water Fountain Fail. She's eager, but clueless, on the technique.

When her appetite returned. In her new Big Girl Chair. 

She loves being able to climb in and out by herself.

And the buckles! So. Much. Fun.

Honey Bear needs her teeth brushed. Notice the extruding tongue

 -- a serious task like this requires total concentration.

Massaging some peanut butter and honey into her hair.

Friends out for a walk

What's more fun than dinner spent at the playground, 

contemplating the sprinklers but not quite going under them?

Serious hair volume, post-peanut butter and honey treatment.

Sitting on the cross bars of the elliptical while Mommy works out

Sorry, my darling girl, Mommy hasn't done a very good job of keeping track of your accomplishments this past month. So this is a little haphazard.

You can now identify pink and purple correctly, at least some of the time. Purple is your clear favorite -- you say it in such a delighted tone of voice, "Puhhh-pull."

You don't know your letters, but when you want me to sing the alphabet song, where as you used to ask, "AB?" plaintively, you are now saying "ABCD?"

You love our goodnight song, You Are My Sunshine, and as soon as I finish singing it, ask for another round of "Sunshine?" Sometimes you "sing" along, in your own wordless, tuneless crooning. You know this makes me laugh and lose my ability to keep singing, and you revel in this. In fact, you do your best to make Mommy crack up each night during singing. When I start to laugh, you chuckle delightedly in my arms as we both shake with mirth.

You also ask for the Itsy Bitsy Spider -- by making the (very approximate) hand motions, and "Tinkle" by making the sign of a "diamond in the sky." And you love "YiYiYo" (Old McDonald).

You still doesn't run very well. Eleanor started walking 2-3 months after you but now she runs much better than you. Admittedly, she looks hilarious, because she runs with her hands up in the air. But what toddler doesn't look funny when she runs? You tend to swing one arm wildly and clench the other close to her chest and sort of fast-walk-shuffle when you want to run.

Babycenter says you should be able to jump from a step, albeit awkwardly. Well, you delightedly announce "jump" ... as you step down. On a flat surface, you squat down and says "jump!" as you straightens your legs and swing your arms... and never leave the ground. Oh well. It's very funny to watch.

What you lack in running and jumping, you make up for in climbing. You can scale ladders and clamber up climbing structures at the playground intended for much older children.

Last weekend we went upstate to work at camp for the weekend. There are no campers there yet, so it was a pretty chill weekend. You loved all the freedom of exploring paths without Mommy insisting on being right next to you. The Canadian geese were fun to watch, but even better was pointing out Every. Single. Piece. Of. Poop they left on the nearby pathway. I'm a little nervous about the un-fenced pond where the geese swim, and I wonder if I should avoid it in hopes that you will never go for an unplanned and unsupervised swim in the not-very-swimmable pond. Luckily the pool where we are supposed to swim in surrounded by a high fence.

But while you were an avid explorer of the physical space, you were reserved when it came to interacting with others. Well, you were happy to share pebbles and crayons and books with 19 month old Kylie, but you preferred not to talk (or give high fives) to the many teenagers who gushed over you. Hopefully they will still think you are cute even if you are reserved.

I'm nervous about what you will think about being with a new babysitter this coming weekend, when we go back for opening day. And I'm dreading another car ride. Since the day I brought you home from the hospital, you have hated the car. You are easy going in nearly all things... except when it comes to the car. You screamed and cried for all but the first ten minutes of the ride up, and all but forty-five minutes on the way home (when you blessedly fell asleep for an all-too-short nap). I feel awful torturing you like this -- given your happy nature, I know you must be very uncomfortable to be causing such a ruckus, but I don't know what alternative I have. This coming weekend, I am nervously going to turn your car seat around to face front and pray fervently that this does the trick. Is it possible that the sight of me, driving, could do the trick? Or could it be that it would less carsickness? (You never throw up in the car but I suspect you might be nauseous.) At the end of our trip back to Brooklyn, you were sweaty and shaking with sobs. I had to hold you and rock you for a long time, and then when I set you down for a mere moment to put on the baby carrier, you dissolved into sobs once more. My poor girl.

I just ordered a book about teaching young children to swim, and am hoping to work on that while we are camp. I think you will love the beautiful photos of babies swimming, regardless.

You were thrilled with the muffin bar, though, on Saturday morning. And clutched the muffin with dogged persistence for over an hour. No way were you letting that thing go -- who knows when you might get another again?

In the last month, you became a big fan of chocolate milk, thanks to the nanny -- she got you interested in one of those "juice" boxes of chocolate milk. We eventually segued into milk with just a teaspoon of chocolate syrup stirred in. And then you got felled with a nasty virus -- high fever and painfully raw throat that left you refusing to eat or drink anything for two days. And finally you agreed to drink, and kept asking for milk. I think it made your throat feel better. And so one day I gave you plain milk, and you drank it readily. And that was the end of chocolate milk.

Now I'm getting a little nervous about how often you ask for milk. If it's not one thing, it's another.

Off to practice the banjo now... this is something Mommy is doing for herself in the [limited] hopes that it might make her a more interesting and well rounded person.

Why bring books into the bathroom when you can bring the bathroom to the books?