Update on K

#2 K (21 months--almost 22 months) is totally in the throws of language acquisition. She's been acquiring for a while, but I forgot how cute it all is. She speaks in 3-4 word sentences. She still gets frustrated and cries, but you can now get her to communicate (sometimes) when she is upset by saying "use your words." Of course, if she's tired, forget it! I'm mostly glad that we haven't had an episode of screaming until throwing up since we implemented Operation No More Throw Up."

K is starting to answer questions. You ask her a question and you can see her thinking to come up with the words she wants. I love it when they do this. I love watching those little wheels in her head turning. K will sometimes answer questions like, "What did you do today?" She doesn't always tell you what she did today, but she will tell you what she's done recently. (Today is kind of an odd concept for kids.)

I also love it when she just starts giving us a stream of consciousness of what she's thinking as she's playing. It's like the Buffy episode where because of some demon blood, Buffy can hear what others are thinking. Many of the characters are thinking deep thoughts, or things unrelated to the situation, but not Cordelia... She's just thinking whatever she says. Pretty funny, and that's what a toddler is like. (There are spoilers on that page for Buffy if you haven't seen that episode and think you might want to see it untainted in the future.)

K also knows how to answer questions when Dora the Explorer asks them. When Dora asks, "Will you help me with XXXXXX?" K will stand up and say, "Yes!" quite enthusiastically. She also will do the "We did it!" dance that Dora and Boots do at the end of an episode.

K is very very coordinated. I marvel at her fine motor control. She holds the crayon correctly, like an adult holds a pencil. I think her "drawing" technique is very good for a 21 month old. Here's a picture of her drawing. (She's not holding a crayon there, the "right way," but you can see she's not clutching them in her fist either.)



K now knows her colors well enough so that she'll tell you what they are. She knows, green, purple, red, yellow, orange and pink and is about 90% accurate. (Not bad for a 22 month old.)

K is still very very much Mommy's girl. I love how much she loves me, but sometimes it's actually really hard. It's hard for me to put her to bed at night because she just wants to cling to me. I usually snuggle and kiss her good night first and then hand her over to her daddy because I can't actually get her to stay in the crib without spending about 45 minutes getting her into the crib. He can get her to stay in there after about 5-10 minutes, but if I'm there she just cries if I put her down.

(I finally resolved this by just nursing her at night. I was trying to keep her at one nursing a day, but she is happier with 2-4. Oh, well. Someday she will be ready to wean.)

I think I've described her as my "girlie girl." She loves taking care of her baby doll. She calls her doll T. Pretty cute and sweet. She's a great big sister and is very gentle with the real T. Last night, she finished dinner first and she played on the floor and entertained the real T for about 10-15 minutes while my husband and I finished eating.

Besides babysitting her baby sister, perhaps the most exciting thing is a real world skill she is developing... She is going potty on the potty!!!!!! Woo-hoo! Celebratory dance. I wasn't trying to start potty training, but last summer we started sticking her up there because she was so interested in what her big sister N was doing. A few times she produced on the potty, and it was positive reinforcement for us, so we just kept sticking her up there.

In the last couple of weeks she's probably gone potty on the potty 12 of the 14 days. She does both types of activities up there and reducing the number of poopy diapers in my life is only a positive thing! She's starting to tell us when she wants to sit on the potty and when she tells us, she'll always do something. She's starting to stay a little dryer during the day. I'm so delighted by this, but I'm not pushing her. Heck, I haven't even gotten out the training pants yet. I'll probably have to dig them out soon.

A few last little things....

All of a sudden she has gotten into watching and reading "My Little Pony."

When she was sick, she didn't want to take her medicine and my husband would have to hold her while I put the medicine in her mouth. As she started getting better she started sucking the medicine out of the syringe, but still acted like she didn't like it and made my husband hold her while I gave it to her. It was pretty funny.

You ask her how she is and she says, "good."

She'll grab T's hand, or our kitty's paw, and shake either the hand or the paw and say, "Meetcha." (Short for Nice to...)

She'll hand T a toy (or several) and say, "Here ya go."

She loves to take walks and hold our hand while walking. She'll walk a long ways doing this. She will stand at the front door and say, "Yalk, Park. Mommy? Daddy?"

So cute!!!