Today Addy is 1.75 years old. The combination of her approaching 2-dom along with today’s anticipated yet still depressing DoS warning have made me want a baby in this house again more than ever.

Addy is just not Baby anymore.  A few notable newish Addy-isms:

She has a way of staring strangers down for food. I don’t think she does it on purpose or with intent (yet!)  but she is continually offered food by strangers. At the basketball game the people sitting nearby gave her their popcorn. At soccer games, other parents would often share whatever food they brought for their own kids. This weekend at the Tet Festival in Houston, a family shared all kinds of food with Addison while we waited for the Lion Dance to start. Being the sort of closed-door Midwesterner that I am, it always strikes me as rude and inappropriate on my end, initially. But we always have food for Addy, she doesn’t beg or ask and she says thank you. I think she’s a uniter. She brings people together over food. There are worse things

This month Addy gave her bottles forever. Yay! That was painless. She is still nursing and the amount she nurses varies on her mood and the day. Sometimes not at all, other times several times in a day. And she’s still a major thumbsucker.

All of that said, she is not sleeping through the night yet. She is sleeping MUCH better since going off the bottles but she still wakes up to pee in the night a few times.

Speaking of which, she is doing much better with the potty training. If I had known back when she was 15 months old and started this process how long it would take and what a pain it would be, I’d have duct-taped on her diapers and let her scream! Ha. I kid. But this is definitely not the easy way to potty train. My boys all trained in a day. This is tedious. But she is doing really well. She goes to gymnastics with underwear on now. She sleeps dry for her nap 100% of the time and wakes up dry overnight more often than not. Most of the time when we go out for long periods of time, she will ask to go potty and come home dry. I think the end is near!

She also trialed giving up milk, cheese and soy (along with a few other foods that she LOVED and was not happy about) in order to deal with some minor digestive issues she’s been having. It made things much worse and having since added those foods back in, she has almost completely resolved herself of any issue at all. Crazy.

She is still growing! She still weighs 23 lbs but must have grown in height even more. She wears a size 6 shoe but bumped up in clothes. Now most of the clothes I’m buying her are 2T with some 3T dresses and shirts and some 18-24 month pants thrown in. She ran completely out of clothes and shoes this winter which has never happened to a kid of mine before mid-season. Texas winters are so short, too, so it was painful to have to update her wardrobe for winter but I think we have a good month left and there was just no more getting by!

Her favorite phrase is “I helping” or “I help” which I hear countless times a day. This is a tiring age! She wants to help with *everything* which slows us down to a snail’s pace. It took me *hours* to sweep my floor today because Little Miss was so adamant about being part of the process (translation: scattering my nicely swept piles all over creation over and over again). Shopping is the same way. She wants to put *every individual item* into a produce bag or into the cart. I try to let her help and I know she’s just gearing up for the even more demanding 2’s but there are days when I really miss doing these things alone! Mostly, though, I find that Addy makes great company. I’ve come to look forward to our little grocery outings alone together.

Another favorite phrase is “I coming”. Unless she is engrossed in something, she still likes to follow us around the house. She has some fears of being left behind that have resulted in some major meltdowns when Tony, for instance, goes out to the garage for 10 seconds because she thinks he’s leaving without saying goodbye and going through their routine (or better yet, taking her with him!). So we all have to stay cognisant of her desire to be with us at all times or go through the proper “goodbye” routine. Thankfully she is also pretty rational so I can explain that Daddy just took the trash out or went to the garage and will be back in a second and she calms down pretty fast.

Speaking of Daddy, it has been a full month now since he’s been at work outside the house full time. We do really good together during the day and Addy never asks for him or misses him outwardly. She naps great for me, too. BUT! She is a totally different child when Tony is home and we are all together. I started noticing that she really laughs a lot more, she is silly and goofy way more often, she is more playful and demonstrative. She is just so happy for those times when we are all together but it makes me a little sad that she can’t be that happy ALL the time.

Cognitively, Addy has grown by leaps and bounds this month. She can say alllll kinds of stuff, she links words together, she says “I” and “you” and she is incredibly empathetic. If I am sad or hurt, she notices right away and says “You ok?” and if she even so much as rubs past someone she says “I sorry”.  It really blows me away how sensitive and feeling my little girl is. She also understands opposites like hot and cold (every time we walk outside these days she says “ooooh, cold!” and she’s right!), sad and happy, she says “spicy” when a food is too spicy and when she gets dressed she sometimes says “Oooh pretty” and asks to look in the mirror. I may have written about this last month but she has a budding sense of humor. Last month she would use her word for “is that funny” which is “Ma mon” every time someone would laugh. Now she does silly things just to crack us up and even before the laughter ensues she asks if she’s being funny. She is so funny about putting in  words the connection between behaviors with emotions. She is also not shy about shushing me if I am yelling at someone….nothing like having the Parenting Police around to keep me in line!

Physically, I think this month has been a bit of a plateau. She is doing so well at gymnastics and absolutely loves her coach. There are days when she concentrates so hard and other days when she is happy to be intentionally contrary or silly. I love that she is so at home in the gym. She also used chopsticks by herself successfully for the first time this month although I’m not sure she quite gets it yet. She learned to use the scissors and I think she’s taken down a small forest with her cutting obsession. She’s still big time into writing. She has her own pens (her writing utensil of choice) and she holds the pen correctly 100% of the time now. She loves to write on EVERYTHING so we’ve had some issues. Today I caught her writing on our kitchen table and chairs. Sometimes its the walls. Sometimes its her clothing or her body. But most of the time she directs it to paper. She loves to write on junk mail and owner’s manuals, especially.

The girl eats. She has always been a huge eater, she is still a huge eater. She just loves the taste of food - all food. She doesn’t care what it is, she doesn’t need to know. Sure, she has her favorites. But she drank a Durian Bubble Tea this weekend (incidentally hearing her say “bubble tea” is the cutest thing EVER) (and also incidentally if you are ever in the situation, do NOT bring Durian into your car! Just do not do it.)  so obviously she isn’t picky. She LOVES soup. She LOVES bananas and will eat an entire bunch in one day if we let her. She loves chicken and peanuts, too. She is crazy about Vietnamese food. She is not difficult to feed! LOL

She’s a girl who knows what she wants. She still really loves pretty things and fancy things. She loves my necklace (my only jewelry besides my wedding ring) and I finally got one of her own that she adored. I am considering buying her this one to match mine. She loves her little baby ring and her bracelets. Over the weekend she voiced serious interest in earrings when she saw the bajillion little Vietnamese girls her age running around with them. She thinks life is seriously unfair that they get them and she doesn’t. We may be visiting the Piercing Parlor in the months to come. I had intended to hold out until she was a bit older, though, so we’ll see. 

Oh! And speaking of ears, we saw her pediatrician this month and had a lengthy conversation about surgery to remove her tags. Her doctor is STRONGLY against the procedure at this age and gave us more than enough research and argument to convince us to not even consider it again until she’s old enough to consent on her own.  So no more ear tag updates from me again for the next several years, you lucky people!

So I think that sums up 21 months. Hopefully by next month she will be completely potty trained but so long as she has a tiny bladder I don’t think we can hope for the Sleeping Through The Night bit. One can hope, though!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 9:32 pm and is filed under Milestones, Photos & Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.