Eeek - we are on the home stretch to 2 years old! Addy has changed so much in just the last month. She is such a big girl with a big girl attitude and demands and communication. I am loving this age so much, most of the time

Notable new things:

* the BIG thing this month is that I took down the baby gate (so to speak - it is still up to keep the dog downstairs but it is now unlocked all the time). I am such a nervous Mom about stairs but she has done great and I don’t even watch her nervously fearing for her life anymore. She goes up and down all day and its opened up a whole new world for her.

* makes things out of duplos. Her favorite thing to build: a camera! This happens many times a week and then we all get our picture taken. She gets really made when she finds Noah’s slightly more advanced duplos mixed in with her’s. She always takes them immediately to his bin and puts them away.

* draws circles over and over and over and talks about it “Look! Circles mama!”

* 3 word sentences like “It heavy arm” or “I jumping high”

* added the word “me” and also the third-person “Addy-Mai” which she uses first-person to describe her stuff

* learned to open doorknobs and lock doors. Great.

*does this cute little fist-pump thing while she runs now and says “I running FAST!”:

*developed her first fears or apprehensions: she is afraid of the lake, afraid of high slides, afraid of jumping off high things (whew!), afraid of loud noises. I think she’s come into some new development that is making her suddenly aware of risk. She has always been quite fearless. I have a feeling we aren’t going to get too far with swimming lessons this summer.

* started saying a dismissive “no no no no no” whenever I infringe on her independence (trying to wipe, pull up her pants after potty, help her climb into my lap, help her do ANYTHING basically etc). MOST Of the time if I get my tone of voice *just right* she will let me help her anyway but this month is marked by the typical “I do” which slows us down to a snail’s pace while she has to try *every.single.thing* herself including putting on *each* shoe before she asks for help for each one, trying to buckle, trying to unbuckle, trying to zip, etc. We’ve all learned to just step back and let her try - its the fastest way to get to the part where we can just help and get on with things.

* starting jumping off things. Can jump off any surface about a foot up or lower and also can jump into the foam pit at gymnastics. I really hope we don’t see couch jumping anytime soon. SO not ready for that broken leg! LOL

* she can do toe-ups (bringing her toes up to the bar in pike on the uneven bar) and push-ups on the uneven bars herself, she can monkey-crawl across the bar, she can walk the wall up into a handstand and she’s really into the sort of pseudo-cartwheel she did in the video earlier this week. She likes to make up her own skills She also learned fast one-footed spins and hopping into a spin, she hops EVERYWHERE, she is very close to doing a full splits finally and those are things they don’t do at gym, she just does them for fun. She is still working on her bridge but is getting very close. She is VERY driven, this is basically what she does all day. Now she’s added some dramatic dance elements and poses to her routines that crack me up. I have no idea where she gets this stuff but she works very hard on it and takes it very seriously!

* can name a bunch of body parts no one ever taught her. We don’t drill her so I’m not even sure how many she knows except the ones she randomly talks about at her naps and I’m always surprised to know she knows the names of parts of her body like “skin” or “neck” or that she differentiates by word “thumb, finger, hand & arm” and also “toes, foot & leg”, etc.

* LOVES Dora and Ni-Hao Kai Lan the best. She loves to repeat the words and do what they tell her to do. Hearing her tell someone “Ni Hao” is about the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. she still uses some Spanish words interchangeably with English. Thankfully the Doodlebops are losing their appeal, not a minute too soon if you ask me. She’s a late bloomer but I think all the cute videos posted lately of kids saying swiper’s “oh man” prompted her to start saying it all the time too. She thinks she is SUPER funny when she says it.

* has become a little teacher. She likes to make up new moves and then say “try it! try it mommy! Try it Daddy!” and orchestrate it so that everyone in the family will do it at once. If anyone stops she gets very mad! If someone falls (say, from dizziness! haha) she asks if they are ok and once they assure her they are fine she demands they return to the lesson. Sometimes she will go over and kick them to get them on their feet faster! She rules with an iron fist!!!!!!

* she was promoted to the 2.5-3 yo gymnastics class which is without parent but we are holding her back as long as possible because her teacher isn’t available during the times that work best for us and we don’t want any other teacher. We love Coach Carla! Secretly I think Daddy isn’t ready to lose this Daddy-Baby time every week, either.

* she wants her ears pierced and has asked several times. We will probably do this soon if we can find a reputable piercing parlor. It is important to me to have it done with a needle as opposed to a gun. If you don’t know why and are interested, read this article or this one or this one.

*FINALLY she is showing more interest in books and reading. Finally. This has been painfully slow coming. Still books are more about talking, for her, than listening.

* she still is way more interested in eating what is on other people’s plates than the *identical* thing on her own. This months he learned to ask “You sharing?” but doesn’t yet care what the answer is! Haha

* this month she figured out chopsticks! She always prefers them to a spoon or fork if they are offered at a restaurant but eventually reverts back to the old standards.

* her favorite food is soup. Any kind of soup. It is a huge meltdown when we order soup at restaurants because it always comes too hot to eat and there is much anxiety until she can dive in. We went to Olive Garden recently and she polished off TWO huge bowls of soup in addition to her meal and bread sticks.

* despite this, it has been a good month for the development of patience. Now when I tell Addy to hold on she says “ok”.

* when I call her by name, she answers “yes!” or “What?” which cracks me up every time. I don’t know why, it just does.

* This has been the Month of the Tantrum - particularly this last week. She has never been very emotional but this week she has been heartbroken about several things - leaving the park, not going outside, coming out of the bike trailer, her brothers going out to play without her. Notice a trend?  She HATES to cry - I should say she hates the actual act of tears falling from her eyes. HATES it. So crying is always a big ordeal because it involves lots of angst about the actual tears, a big to-do with wiping them out of her eyes. And she does one hell of a pathetic cry-face. We are totally whipped. on the upside, the hatred of the tears means her tantrums last about 2 seconds and almost immediately become about the tears and not the original sadness. Easy to fix and I always get to be the hero!

*finally sleeping through the night most of the time, still taking a 2 hour nap usually from 3-5pm. She is getting harder to put down though and never acts tired so it is tempting to give up on the naps but *I* need the break. She also wakes up like hell. It takes her a good half hour to be fully awake and not a total basket-case. She gets it from her Mama

* we are STILL struggling to finish up the potty training. It has been 7 months since we last bought diapers. In comparison my boys were trained in about 24 hours. So this has been an adjustment. There are days she stays dry all day, there are days she tries very hard and might have one accident and then there are days when she literally does not make it to the potty once. Thankfully the last type happens very very rarely. I think she’s heavily impacted by diet. Not sure if its worth exploring or not. Thankfully she hasn’t pooped anywhere but the potty in 7 months. She still wakes up dry from naps. I HOPE she is fully done with daytime accident by her second birthday. She’s had several very good days in a row now so *knock on wood* hopefully this is the end of it.

Whew! I’m sure I missed some stuff. I have no idea what she weighs or what her height is. I don’t THINK she has grown TOO much more. She’s in straight 2Ts in shirts and dresses and pants are still 18 months with adjustable waist although today she wore 6-12 month Naartjie shorts that were falling off her! She’s got the 4 molars and all her teeth but her one bottom canine on the right although the left canine just broke through this month.

I hope to post more pics and video now that the weather is better and we are in a better groove.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 28th, 2008 at 9:33 pm and is filed under Milestones, Photos & Videos, Things I Love. 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.