Monday, September 30, 2013

21 months.

the time is seriously flying.  i know i say that all the time but it seems crazy to me that avery's almost been a part of our family for 2 years!  

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21 months has definitely brought us closer to two.  :)  she's opinionated, funny, and not afraid to tell you what she wants and when she wants it.  sometimes i feel like we live with a toddler dictator and this month has brought a bunch of 'throw myself on the floor' tantrums for reasons that are usually not apparent to me.  ironically she's also getting better and better at communicating her wants and needs, but life is still frustrating at times in the toddler world.  

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i have no idea how many words she knows but she's getting pretty good at stringing them together.  i've heard a few real sentences this month, including "where is dunkin" and others that i can't seem to remember.  she'll normally put between 3 and 4 words together to get her thoughts across and leave out unimportant words like "the, it, that, and a few pronouns".  she's still consistently mixing up "you" and "me" although we're sort of working on it when i remember.  she can count to three on her own and has managed this feat a few times when counting animals or balls.  after three the numbers get a bit jumbled, but she does enjoy counting.  i sort of give the "one, two, three" success credit to a brittany spears song that charlie listens to all the time.  

she's also pretty good about verbalizing why she's upset.  usually when she starts to throw a fit she can calm down at at least tell you why if you sort of help her through the process.  however sometimes, life is too hard and she just ends up screaming about it.  

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she is going through a huge mommy phase right now, which is hard for all of us.  basically, she wants me to do everything for her.  if she asks for water and charlie hands it to her, she'll melt down because she wanted me to hand it over and not him.  she actually really enjoys spending time with him.  she wants him around to play with, read books with, and dance with but when had a need apprenately she wants those fulfilled by me.  this includes diaper changes, making meals, holding her, etc..  luckily charlie's good about just doing those things anyway, even when she throws a fit over them, but it would make everyone's life easier if she would let charlie help out a bit.  

she loves music and dancing and has a strong preference for "daddy's music".  when she's dancing she has a few moves that she does by request which include "shoulders", "hips", and "fist pumping".  all of this comes from charlie and she really does love to dance with him.. when we go somewhere in the car she'll let me know that she hates my music and request specific songs that charlie has.  she loves singing songs, especially the ones that come up in her gymnastics class and a recent favorite has been 'the itsy bitsy spider'.  

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she's still really into the animals and has gotten into taking care of them even more.  she helps to feed the cats, dumping the food in their bowls and then making sure they finish (never a problem) and helps with the dogs food and treats as well.  when we got back from vacation henry had done something which resulted in some pretty nasty cuts on his ears.  she helped me to clean them out a few times a day and would even remind me about it saying, "check henry's ears".  she is also really into cutting their nails and giving them baths and requests both at least once a day.  the other day she even went into the basket where we keep the nail clippers and i found her cutting first ollie's nails and then dunkin's.  she's gotten a little nicer with henry lately, giving him lots of hugs, telling him "good boy, henry" and one morning she even hugged him and said, "i love you henry".  i'm a little upset that the dog got an i love you before i did, but it was still pretty cute to see.  he's still weary of her but hopefully over time he'll chill out.  ollie is still her favorite guy and she loves to lay on him, snuggle with him, and give him lots of pets. i feel like she's gotten maybe just a tad more gentle with him this month, but maybe that's all in my head.

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she's gotten into climbing on things and likes to do things herself, like getting into chairs, climbing on playgrounds, getting in her stroller, and of course doing the buckle in her carseat.  it's a huge mistake if you forget and buckle the carseat for her.  i also think she's grown.  she was 20 pounds at the ER in california, a peanut for sure, but that's 2 pounds in 2 months, which surpassed her usual growth rate.  she's moved into size 4 diapers, which is annoying since i had just bought a huge box of size 3's for nighttime.  

she loves to help doing whatever we're doing around the house.  this includes laundry, cleaning, house projects, and occasionally picking up her toys.  she also still loves reading.  i pulled out our fall and halloween books a few weeks ago and she's found a few favorites in there.  "hot fudge" quickly became and favorite and i think i read that at least 20 times a day for a week.  she's also really into any books with pumpkins, clifford, and animals.  she loves her national geographic books and likes to read those on her own.  she's very picky about which books we're allowed to read and which ones she must read, but we do read books every morning, "books and coffee" and at night before bed.  some days we'll do a lot more but those two times are the book times that we never miss and that she'll ask for if we happen to forget.  

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she's gotten slightly better about eating lately.  i've made a few meals that she hasn't completely hated including tortilla soup, which she loved, and i also made homemade macaroni and cheese for the first time and she loved it.  she loves grapes, yogurt, granola, oatmeal, onions, and pizza (usually).  the onions are the strangest thing to me because she loves raw onion and when i cook always demands pieces of it.  so gross to me but whatever.  cooked onions aren't so bad in her book, either.  she's still drinking only water although we haven't offered much else, maybe a sip of juice here or there but she hasn't shown any interest in it.  i keep meaning to offer her almond milk again but i keep forgetting.  

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it's so crazy to me to see how fast she grows and changes and even though some of those changes make it harder to do things, i've loved watching her grow up.  it's still sort of surreal to me that she's going to be a 'big' sister soon because i still think of her as my baby.  sometimes i get a little sad when i think of the fact that she'll be getting less one on one attention and hugs and i wonder how she's going to do with the adjustment of it all.  but i do think she's going to be a great sibling and i'm excited to see how she does with the baby.  hopefully the want to help with things will transfer over to having a baby to take care of and she'll get into helping with her brother or sister. 
   

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