Ros turned 18 months recently, so I figured since that's somewhat of a big milestone, I'd do a little post on her before I start blogging about more or less interesting things (depending on your opinion).
Basically, she's not a baby anymore. That becomes more apparent every day. I have to say, toddlers are a lot more fun than babies. I'd even venture to say they're easier, but if you know me, you know I had a difficult baby and a difficult time dealing with her. In any case, I quite like the stage Ros is getting into. I'll just go through some highlights and throw in some pictures:
Last week, we went to the doctor for her checkup. She enjoys playing with the little toys they have while we're waiting, but this time when I had to take her clothes off, she threw a fit. She wasn’t ready, I guess. She was okay until the doctor came in, and then she screamed and ran to me and cried hard the entire time he was in the room, screeching anew every time he touched her or she had to turn around so he could look at something (she was burying her face in my neck). She cried all through her shot (just one this time, and the last one til kindergarten!!!) and in the car, and was almost hyperventilating. She has never been like that at the doctor before. It was kind of ridiculous. It was funny, but annoying, because I could hardly hear what the doctor was saying with all that screaming in my ear. We went to D.I. afterward because it was the only thing open, and I bought her a tiny whisk, which she was very excited about (oh, the things that will calm a toddler).
I finally started keeping a list of words she knows. The rules are that they just have to be ones that we recognize (meaning they don’t have to be pronounced correctly), and they have to be spontaneous, as in, she can come up with them herself, without prompting. She apparently knows between 50 and 60 words, maybe more if I count onomatopoeias. The doctor was incredibly impressed by that. He says that is on the “fantastic” end of the spectrum. She can also combine two words into phrases when she wants to, another thing the doctor was impressed by. He says she sounds very verbal and very smart, which makes sense because she is almost literally talking non-stop these days. It’s a little reassuring to hear all that, because she’s been so consistently behind on her gross motor skills. She obviously can walk well enough now, but her balance is horrible and she falls down or trips frequently. She can’t run yet, to which the doctor replied “Well, she’ll get there.” That’s been his response for everything I’ve said “no, she can’t do that” to over the months (pulling up, walking, crawling, etc etc). But that’s okay.
Oh, so we obviously had her measured at the doctor, and she weighed almost 26 pounds and was about 32 and a half inches tall. I’m seriously surprised she doesn’t weigh 30 pounds yet, but she has always felt heavier than she is basically since day one (did I ever mentioned after they weighed her at birth and saw she was 9lb4oz, didn’t believe it, checked to see if the scale was broken, and weighed her again? They were surprised she wasn’t over 10 pounds). Anyway. She’s been in 2T stuff for a while, but it has to be stretchy. Anything fitted, or jeans, is basically gone. She’s quite the fatty, and I don’t know how that’s possible. This is including days when she’s in disposable diapers, so don’t go blaming it on cloth.
The “terrible twos” I think are beginning. She whines a lot more than she used to, and seems to give in to her emotions a lot more frequently instead of using one of her billions of words to actually tell us what she wants. She’s in the throes of hitting-for-fun (or hitting when someone is uncooperative), which is so so nice, just in time for nursery. Hooray. She also has started stomping her feet up and down when she’s upset about something, which makes me have to stifle a laugh.
She is also getting into real-world stuff. I guess that’s a weird way to word it, but by that I mean that she is very interested in routine, in her personal hygiene (brushing teeth, washing hands, toileting, etc) and participating and doing it herself. She wants to help do everything. I let her pick her outfits out of her drawer every day (as is sometimes evident by a poor pattern choice), and she helps move the stool around to wash her hands, etc. She climbs all over everything and gets into everything, and tries to help pick out my own clothes for the day (not happening). She accompanies me to the toilet to dump stuff from her diaper and is learning how to flush. Sometimes she asks to sit on the toilet when she’s pooping, but she almost always immediately forgets why she’s there and just wants to play, then the poop comes later, which is fun for me because I have to deal with it twice. Oh well.
She also is interested in preparing food. We’ve collected little dishes for her to use while we’re making dinner and stuff, and she loves it. It’s pretty cute. She loves her bunny, and will take bunny to the toilet, tuck bunny into “bed” (with any cloth lying around), put bunny in her chair and buckle him in, feed bunny with her toy dishes, etc. It’s pretty cute, and I love watching her do it. I’m this close to giving her a doll, but I’m hesitant because it’s so adorable with the bunny.
Anyway, she’s just getting big. We’re switching out a lot of her toys for more age-appropriate stuff (budget allowing), and she is loving trying new things. She also loves to play with her cousins. She sees Megan’s kids every now and then, and since Sam's sister Caity moved here from Connecticut, Ros has been able to see her cousin Bea pretty frequently. They love playing together, except that Ros doesn’t like to be told what to do or have her hand held. Other than that, though, they do fine, and I think it’ll be good for Ros to have a regular playmate since we don’t have any playgroups going on around here anymore, at least, not that I know about.
Speaking of playmates, Rosalind started nursery! She loves “singing” and sitting in tiny chairs and playing with other kids, so I think over all she will love the experience. Her first day was on Sunday. There actually isn’t much to say about it! We dropped her off, introduced ourselves to the nursery leader, and she went off to play. Apparently she had a good time with all the activities they did, and we went to pick her up afterwards and she was still fine. She started freaking out a bit when she saw our faces, but apparently she was a champ the whole time. I’m glad it was so easy, and hopefully it will continue to be easy. They gave us her coloring page—I’m not sure why, as it only has one tiny red squiggle of crayon on it. I'm probably the only one, but I think that’s hilarious, so I’m keeping it.
What else...oh! Her memory is getting better, too. For instance, we have tons of spiders, beetles, earwigs, and other wonderful things living in this apartment (I bet you all want to come visit now, eh?). A few weeks or maybe a month ago, we were eating breakfast and a big spider goes crawling across the wall. I don't want to freak out about spiders or bugs or stuff around Ros because I'd rather her be interested in them than afraid of them, so we pointed at the spider and talked about it for a minute, then it crawled behind a painting we have above the kitchen table. That night, she pointed to the painting and asked "Where'd it go?" so we looked back there, and of course it was gone. Almost every meal now, she will point at the painting and ask "where'd it go?" thinking that the spider is still hanging around (it better not be).
She's also showing preference for things. Obviously I'm encouraging this with letting her pick out her clothes for the day, but sometimes she'll freak out if I give her the wrong pacifier or the wrong color of bib. So there's that.
Anyway, she's just progressing right along, and for some reason has gotten a lot more cuddly lately. No clue why, but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
Pictures!
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| Wearing hats and carrying things are her "thing" |
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| Madam, how do you do? |
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| Sunday morning lie-in |
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| Again with hats. |
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| Playing at Aunt Caity's house |
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| All ready for her first day at nursery! You can see her arm rolls through that sweater... |
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| Climbing on the dresser |
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| "NIGH-NIGHT BUNNEEE!!" (A lot of things are yelled these days) |
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| See what I mean? Why. |
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| And an outfit choice I should've nixed. |
