Nineteen Months Old!

Dear Carolyn,

What a month! We’ve officially entered the “no” phase. I ask you a question, and your automatic response is “no!” The thing is, you say it in this really cute, matter-of-fact, tiny little voice, and it’s so hard not to laugh.

OK, fine, I’ll admit it. I generally do laugh. It’s a better option than getting angry, and when you’ve said “no!” to every single thing we have to do to get ready to go somewhere in the morning and we’re running an hour late because of it, laughter is really the only option.

You’ve actually made quite a huge improvement in your language skills over this past month, not even counting your very clear “no”. You’ve picked up so many animal signs from the new set of Signing Time DVDs we got you last month I can’t even keep track of them. You know more of them than I do! You sing your ABCs – and can recognize most of the written capital letters – and count to 10. You love the song “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and will start singing it randomly when you want to hear it. You’ve also started doing what I call litanies. You might be nursing before bed, and you’ll say “mama milk, daddy milk, molly milk, mercy (murphy) milk…” and keep on going with all the names you can think of at the moment. (It’s really funny when you throw Uncle Michael into one of those litanies, because most of the time you call him “mucka-my”.) You do this with all sorts of phrases, like “mama sleep” or “molly eat” too, not just milk. I suppose those count as two word sentences.

Sometime in the past month you also started full-out running. You run with sound effects – I can’t describe the sound you make while you run, but you do it every time. Someday I need to catch it on video. If you could spend every waking minute outdoors on swings and slides, and running around, you would. Your biggest tantrums are the result of me having to drag you indoors because it’s started pouring or we need to go run errands.

Somehow, despite your love of the outdoors, you’ve also become quite the TV addict. Your favorite shows are Blue’s Clues, Signing Time, and Go Baby. I suppose they’re all pretty harmless, and I try to limit you to a half-hour of TV a day, though there are days when you get your way and get to watch twice that much TV. You also love to watch baseball, and will bring Daddy the remote after dinner and ask “bay-bah? bay-bah?” The other day you pointed to one of the players on the screen and said “Daddy hat?” because he was wearing the same baseball cap that Daddy always wears. You’re a pretty smart kid.

When you’re not outdoors or in front of the TV (which is thankfully in a different room than all your toys) you occupy yourself with blocks, dolls and puzzles. And books! We’re even starting to read some longer picture books lately, although you do love your lift-the-flap and touchy-feely books still.

I have to admit, between the “no, no, no”s and the fact that I spend so much time chasing you down to try to get anywhere or do anything with you, this month has been pretty challenging. But at the same time it’s been a blast since you’re starting to communicate so much better and we can actually have little conversations that aren’t totally one-sided anymore. I suspect that the challenging part of things is going to get worse before it gets better, but that everything you’re learning how to do is going to far outweigh that. I’m already seeing glimpses of the little girl you’re becoming, and although I know you’ve still got a long time as a toddler I also know how fast time has gone so far, and I’m not going to wish away one second – even the challenging ones.

Love, Mommy