Baby girl is 16 months old. She's technically not a baby anymore, but "toddler girl" just doesn't have the same ring to it, and let's face it, she'll always be MY baby. So baby girl it is. I worry that this might confuse her when we talk about "the baby" that's coming, and then in the next breath I turn around and call her the baby, but she doesn't seem too distraught over the issue. Plus she's turning out to be one smart cookie, so maybe it's not dissonant for her at all.
This is such an amazing and fun age. We are having to start disciplining her, which is such a change from the first year when we just loved her and fed her and made sure she smiled as much as possible. It's hard to see her get frustrated with us, with the boundaries we're setting. It would be so very easy (and is so very tempting) to just give give give and never draw a single line anywhere. But we know that would only hurt her in the long run and that the boundaries, though hard to understand at times, are really good for her. Eeesh, this parenting thing is no joke, eh?
To make up for the new difficulties we face with her, mother nature decided this would be a pretty perfect time to step up the fun factor as well. We run and jump and chase each other and laugh and roll around on the floor. She understands us now (though she doesn't always like what we're saying) and can bring us what we ask her for. She remembers things, like where we leave her toys and where the gift bag that had Elmo's picture on it used to be stacked. She can picking out "match" shoes and tell me what she does and doesn't want to wear. She says bye-bye to her bath toys when bath time is over and patiently lets us brush her teeth (as long as we count while we do it). But with all the fun things we do together and witness her learning, I think her language skills are still the most impressive to me!
She's starting to learn possessives, and will tell us "Mommy shoes" and "Daddy shoes" and "Ali shoes." She's stringing together words into simple sentences, things like "more milk please" (which comes out as "mo mik peeeeese"). She can say multisyllabic words pretty well now, her best being "octopus," which she, amazingly enough, says correctly. She says "besh you" after someone sneezes--all on her own. If she sees a mess, she says "dirty" over and over again until you acknowledge that, yes baby girl, that is, in fact, dirty, and then as you clean it up she says, "kean--tank you!" The other morning, after sleeping in 'til a delicious 9:15 a.m., I peeked out of our bedroom, excited to spend some time with my girl. She flashed me a huge smile, jumped up, said "Mommy!" and then took one look at my bed-hair and told me "brush? Mommy brush! Brush!" (Thanks for that one, sweetie.) AND, she can identify the letters A, B, O, and K, and make their sounds!
In short, she's a talking machine. And I love every single second of it.
In Dos's world, everything is going great! I am just about to the critical 24-week mark, and we'll get a full anatomy scan at our appointment next week--45 minutes of getting to see our little guy on screen and taking pictures of every part of him to make sure that he's developing perfectly. I can't wait! This time around we bought a doppler from a friend and can now listen to his heart beat any time we want, which has become one of my favorite ways to unwind at the end of the day. He's sitting a LOT lower than Ali ever did, so most of his movement involves kicks and punches to my bladder. Super fun stuff. The progress on Ali's big girl room is coming right along--we have the furniture, bedding, and pain color picked out . . . now all we have to do it put it all together!
What else is there? Work is keeping us both busy, and our sweet little
Life is good.
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