Sylvia is 21 months old!

It feels like Sylvia has gone through a transformation in the past month. If I had to put a name on it, I guess I'd say that she's gone from toddling baby to an earnest toddler. Which sounds kinda lame when I say it that way, but it's really awesome! Her language and physical abilities have been really taking off, and I just can't believe how she seems less and less like a baby and more and more like a little kid.

Sylvia had her second Easter. I expected it to be another year before she could hunt for eggs, but my aunt and uncle set up a hunt for her and my 10-year-old cousin. We gave her a basket, took her out to the lawn, pointed out an egg, and told her to go pick it up and put it in her basket. She did it, and we asked her if there were any more, and she was off! I won't pretend that she didn't continue to get some assistance, but she really had it figured out and had a really great time! And she learned a new word: "egg-ggie". She was pretty unhappy when all the eggs had been found and it was time to go in. Once I got tired of taking her eggs, laying them back out, and letting her collect them, we dragged her into the house, where she proceeded to begin a game of opening up the eggs, declaring them "boke", and handing them to the nearest adult for repair. She also entered into a game of hiding and finding eggs in my aunt's sweater pocket. It was a wonderful day, and Sylvia was totally ready when we had an egg hunt with some neighbors the next day. Several days later, and she's still hiding and finding eggs, and taking them apart and demanding help putting them back together.

We've started going to My Gym, where we attend classes designed for kids around Sylvia's age. She gets impatient with 'circle time' and with activities which require her to wait her turn, but it's probably good that she start to learn how to manage those kinds of situations. And she has a lot of fun playing with their stuff.

She's also had her first trip to the dentist and (today) her first hair cut. At the dentist, she enjoyed being somewhere with new toys. She was very pleasant to the people but resisted somewhat when they sat her down to poke around in her mouth. Then they took her away for a minute to get a treat, and she came back looking like this:

At the hairdresser, she enjoyed being somewhere with new toys, was very pleasant to the people but resisted somewhat when they sat her down to mess with her hair. She tried to get back down to the big train set a few times and kept trying to look at the hairdresser, but she was really quite good. The hairdresser offered to give her a lollipop, but I didn't think she was quite ready for that; we shared a donut instead.

Here's an 'AFTER' shot. Don't feel bad if you can' tell the difference. She barely had any hair to start!