The 22nd Month

Reading: Little People, Little Critter, Karen Katz books, all of our potty books, Seuss, and Goodnight Moon. Little L has also been into her new interactive point-and-read Sesame Street books, although this month wasn't a heavy reading month. She tends to favour her e-books when she is alert and energetic, and the hard copies when she is in a quiet mood or winding down.

Eating: Christmas means that we've all been consuming too much sugar, Little L included. Lots of Christmas festivities also mean that we've been out in the evenings, resulting in more fast food than I care to admit. We do try to provide her with the healthiest available options (apple slices and yogurt instead of fries), and thankfully she isn't a big fried food junkie anyway, but in the New Year we are committed to healthier food and less processed junk (plus smoothies in our diet again - I've missed 'em!). Her current faves continue to be fruit and carbs (namely ramen, organic mac-n-cheese, sticky rice, pancakes, etc.) and dairy (homo organic chocolate milk, Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese and ice cream), plus honey ham and oven-fried chicken. My girl is also a ravenous chocaholic who will eat any and every kind of chocolate; she inherited this from her father ;) And on a grosser note, she is also really into toast with mayonnaise (which she has dubbed yummynaise).

Saying: Per usual, she is chatting up a storm and is learning to use pronouns in her sentences, although she still confuses "I" and "you," and sometimes uses the wrong gender pronoun. Little L has figured out a few prepositions like behind, on top of, under, and in(side), which she uses quite often in her play talk. I've caught her practicing her enunciation a few times, with words like except and again; she will actually look at herself in the mirror and repeat them over and over again slowly and in exaggerated fashion. The words that she likes to say include random, context, and awkward. I guess that's pretty indicative of what she feels she hears a lot around here ;)

Little L continues to manipulate and invent new words. Her most recent include linging (no idea what that means) and saying beaut and pret instead of "beautiful" and "pretty." I'm not sure why she decided to drop the second syllable on both words, since she knows them, but I suspect it is because we react to her and so she continues to do so playfully, for effect. She also noticed that the word forward sounds like "four-word" because she once said "five-ward" and I corrected her. Now, she says, "There's no five-ward, no six-ward, no eight-ward, only forward and backward." LOL!

I've been doing this thing where, as she is nursing to sleep, I say to her, "I love you when you..." and I will list about 25 things from the day that she has done, that I love her for. Just a few days ago, after I finished listing them, she unlatched and I heard her little voice declare, "I love you always!" She has continued this for the past few days. It makes me melt.

Playing: Little L has yet to master the skill of jumping, so she has been asking us to help her "jump" on her new mini-trampoline. It's a massive workout for our biceps and back to have to hold under her arms and lift her up and down, but I'm hoping that she will soon get the hang of the motions and start jumping on her own. Sometimes she will climb on the tramp and jump on her knees, but she prefers using us as her personal bungee cords.

Little L's gross motor skills are being honed via twirling and climbing and "yoga" (downward dog pose is her all-time favourite) and standing on tiptoe and running and scooting forwards and backwards and full-speed runs. Given her seeming affinity for ballet, I've enrolled her in a mom-and-tot dance class that starts in the new year. I'm hoping that we have more success with this sort of class, or else it will be another wasted bunch of $.

Her imagination soars as she plays with her various Little People figurines and Disney playsets. Little L also likes to take the characters with her around our home, interacting with them in different contexts. One game she enjoys is hide-n-seek with her stuffies or trying to fit the "mean queen" (Queen of Hearts figurine from an Alice in Wonderland set) into random holes and spaces. She's also obsessed with playing with our bath sheets and towels, which she will use as a tent, or a blanket, or a "sled," or a jacket/cape, among other things.

Since showing Little L how to make little "dots" using her fingertips as stamps, this is one of her favourite ways to draw. She will ask me to colour her fingertip a certain shade, and then she will press her finger onto paper and make little coloured circles all over her page. When she wields the marker, she also likes to stab the paper to make dots all over the page.

Although the iPad continues to be one of her favourite toys, Little L is getting much better at responding to time limits that we impose, be it 5 or 10 minutes or whatever length it is. We just give her a countdown and usually she complies with no fuss. She *has* learned to bargain, however; sometimes after her X minutes are up, she will look at us, and offer with her cutest face and voice, "10 more minutes?"

Wearing: Pretty sure she is holding her weight and height at this point. Still mostly 2T-3T, although I think her shoe size 24 might be getting a bit too tight, judging from her Crocs (size 6-7) that barely fit now. She asked me for slippers the other day; weird.

Other New Things: 
Little L had mango, egg nog, and California roll sushi this month, and she loved all of these things!

She also watched her first-ever TV Christmas specials (the Charlie Brown one and the Rudolph one), albeit for only about 5-10 minutes before asking that we turn it off. :) We also let her watch Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood on the TV using our Apple TV and Netflix account, which she *loved*, and now she will request it by saying, "I want to watch the potty song on the TV."

I introduced paintbrushes and kid's paint (the Crayola, "non-toxic" variety since I can't find a good natural one that is thick), and she loved it! Now she will come up and announce, "I want to paint. Have to put on a smock. Go find the smock!" before running full-speed to her bedroom.

Magically (or so it seems), Little L has begun to prefer her toddler floor bed to the family bed. Much to the dismay of my back, I am now sleeping on the edge of a twin floor mat while my 22-month-old occupies most of the actual mattress. She requested it a few nights ago, and now (at least for the past week), the majority of our nights have been spent in her room (vs. ours). I'm not sure how I am going to transition her out of night-nursing so that I can sneak back to the comfort of our king bed, but I think that, after 22 months, we must now buy a baby monitor. Funny.

Since it was Christmas, our family set up a tree (for the first time as a family), and also visited various light displays around the city. Little L experienced her first "train ride" around Stanley Park's Bright Nights display, and I have to say, she was pretty underwhelmed. Maybe she'll grow to appreciate it as she gets older! ;)

And that's a wrap, 2013! See ya in 2014!!

PS - My most popular post for 2013, it seems, was my Foonf Review! The second spot went to the Lonely Life of the Extrovert, and finishing third was Sparing the Rod. Oh, dear readers (and Internet peeps), you have strange tastes ;) That, and now I know why people write reviews on products - to drive traffic to their blogs!