Carolyn

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

Dear Carolyn,

Today you are 18 months old! We celebrated by going to your last session of Babies Love Books at the library. As of today all of our scheduled activities are over for the summer, with the notable exception of playgroup.

This morning you absolutely shocked me by picking up your letter “D” alphabet block, pointing to the letter, and saying and signing the letter “D”. Then I showed you “A”, “B” and “C”, and you named those as well. I stopped there, because I’m a little frightened. Aren’t you too young to start recognizing your letters?!? You’re starting to really get good at counting as well, and will often count your toes when you’re barefoot. Sometimes you end up with 6 toes on a foot, but I think it’s just because you can’t wait to get to “8, 9, 10!” I have to admit, I haven’t kept very good track of what new signs you know this month, but you’re starting to try to sign the letters and numbers, and we just got the next set of Signing Time DVDs with all kinds of animals on them so I bet you’ll learn a lot over the next few weeks. I can think of 100 words you say now – I know there are some I couldn’t remember when I wrote them all down though, so there’s probably quite a few more. I can’t believe that just three months ago you barely said three words.

Now that the weather is warmer, we’ve been going outside and playing with chalk and bubbles, and swinging on your swing – it’s very cute when you say “wheeee!” every time I push the swing. The funniest thing in the world to you is when we’re on the deck with the bubbles and the dogs, and Molly jumps up on her hind legs and snaps at the bubbles. You love being outside so much that when I have to take the dogs out and it’s raining, and I leave you indoors, you cry like your little heart is broken in two. I think I’m going to have to get you rain boots and a slicker so you can go out and play in the puddles.

“No!” has become a rather frequently used word in your vocabulary. Sometimes you get in a mood where you’ll say “no” to everything, even things that you want. Luckily, it’s still cute. We’ll see how cute it still is in a few months!

You really want to do everything yourself now. You point to your chest and say “tee” – which is your name for yourself apparently – when you want to do it instead of letting me. So far you can get your pants on most of the way, your shirt on with a little guidance, and your socks on pretty much on your own. You blow your nose – and toss the used tissue! – and wash your face on your own, and you get a turn at brushing your teeth and hair after I do it. And if it’s bath night, you can feed yourself an entire container of yogurt!

I love hearing you wake up every day. You almost immediately start calling for “Moddy” and “Mercy”, and you talk to your dolls and laugh at whatever they say back to you. You’re always so happy to see me when I come to get you each morning, and your smile brightens up my morning too!

Love, Mommy