20 Months

Today you are 20 months old.
Somehow, this makes your second birthday seem like tomorrow.

Before we know it, we'll be tackling potty training and transitioning you into a toddler bed... Someone once said that with young children, the days are often long and slow, but the months fly by and I think this is probably an accurate way of describing the last 20 months.
This particular month has been.... challenging. I feel like we went from having a super contented toddler to a little girl that's entire purpose is to teach me patience and creativity. Don't get me wrong, we've still had some hilarious (or as you say, "Larius") moments, but you are also learning how to manipulate, test boundaries and throw tantrums.

You discovered the word NO in a big way this month. When I used to ask, "Do you want to go upstairs and take a bath?", you would more or less comply by holding your arms up and saying "up" or repeating "bath", suddenly your shaking your head and politely saying, "No". You currently have a terrible diaper rash from sleeping in a midnight poop and every time I change your diaper, you shout, "Nononononono Mommy! Owie!" I feel TERRIBLE.
As for trickery, the other night after you talked yourself to sleep in the normal way, you decided all of a sudden that you didn't want to go to bed. You started by just calling for me, then it turned to, "Edie - up! out! Come here Mommy?" And when that didn't work, you started repeating, "Change diaper" over and over. At this point I assumed you'd dirtied the clean diaper I'd just put on you for bed and went in to change it. But it was just a tiny bit wet. You were totally working me! You knew if you asked for a diaper change, it would get me in your room and you were right. This trickery is a new stage for us and it doesn't stop there. You are turning into a major jokester, with your own brand of humor these days.
Your verbal skills are probably the most note worthy in their development this month. You are now speaking mostly in phrases and simple sentences, rather than one word at at time. Your sentences are more caveman than aristocrat, but surprising in their effectiveness. Off the top of my head, here are the phrases/sentences that I've heard this month:

Wait a minute

Come here/Come on - you were playing in your room with the gate up the other day while I checked my email next door and when you wanted me to read you a book, you stood at the gate and said, "Mom come here! Book - read."

What?? - I absolutely love this one. You say it in the same high pitch, sarcastic tone that your Dad and I say it in. And you use it in surprisingly accurate ways. My favorite is when we were reading the Olivia book - on the page where Olivia covers her bedroom wall with splatter paint in an attempt to recreate a Jackson Pollack painting, you pointed at her Mother (who has her mouth open in shock at having discovered Olivia's "art") and said, "What??!!" As if to narrate the Mom's feelings.

Edie go boom - when you fall down, this is how you tell us about it.

Edie run - self explanatory. You also like to yell this over and over when sitting in the grocery cart at Costco; indicating that I should set you down to run rampant through the store.
Boy hit - a boy hit you at the playground the other day and you walked up to me and said, "boy hit." with an intonation implying, "Mom, that boy hit me! Why did that happen?"

Hand hurts - you got your fingers pinched in the sliding door at my parents house last week and you cried to me, "Hand hurts!" over and over.

With "baby" and "blanket" - you sleep with both every night without exception.

Cars zoom by. This is something you feel the need to point out all the time. Like every time a car drives by.

After dinner - Whenever you ask Dad to take you to the truck to hang out, he tells you "after dinner". The other day, I caught you looking out the window at the truck and saying to yourself, "Truck. After dinner." As if to reassure yourself that eventually, you would get to visit the truck.

Meece go? As in "Where did Maurice go?

more ____. You now ask directly for more of anything/everything in sentence form rather than just saying "more" while eating something you want more of. Frequently, we get lucky and get a "more ___ please."

Right here/Right there - this one cracks me up. The other day I was getting you some blueberries from the freezer and you pointed at your plate and said, "Blueberries! Right here!" Now you use the phrase "right here" all the time.
Change diaper - When you dirty your diaper now, you frequently run to the stairs and start climbing up them to your room, saying "Change diaper". Last week this started happening with plain old wet diapers too.

At random moments, I'll hear you say to yourself, "Ready set go."

Edie's turn - you're still speaking about yourself in the third person for the most part. At the playground and in general, when you want to do something next, you say "Edie's turn!"

Watching me mow the lawn.
"Edie's turn" to mow the lawn.

And I save your most impressive sentence for last: We were gardening in the backyard last weekend and you pointed to some flowers and said, "These flowers pretty." I took it in stride at the moment, but later realized what an impressive sentence that was. Since then, this format is becoming more common.

Aside from all the vocabulary you're developing, here are a few other things worth mentioning:

- You can count to 6.
- You confidently know all your colors, including pink, purple, black, white and brown.
- You remember and ask about your friends ALL THE TIME. Favorites are still Reid, Danny, Chloe, Mae and AJ (Alison Jane). After meeting a new playmate, you'll ask about them for a day or two, repeating any interesting facts about them from the one playdate.
- You adore your grandparents. Dad's parents have officially become (without us pushing the issue) Gramma Fifi and Grampa Mustache. My parents are simply Gramma and Grampa. You ask about all of them all the time and love spending time with them. You even remember you Great Grammas on both sides - Jean and GGBee.
- You have most of your favorite books memorized and fill in the blanks when I pause during a sentence while reading to you.
- You are way too comfortable climbing up and down the stairs.
- You love reading, music and dancing. Reading in particular - at library story times you will walk away from me, into the thick of the older toddlers and sit in the middle of the room to stare raptly at the librarian while she reads the whole story. Just thinking about your chubby little face staring up at the librarian makes me SO smitten with you. Almost enough so that I forget that you cried for 10 minutes on Thursday because I wouldn't let you smear bubbles all over the kitchen floor.

Love you,
Mom