Sylvia is 20 months old!

Today, Sylvia weighs about 26 pounds and is about 32 inches tall. The other day, I counted about 45 words or phrases (like "all-gone!" and "where-go?") that she uses fairly reliably, and I know there are more.

At home, she has been more interested in her stuffed animals and her baby doll than her other toys. She walks around with them, gives them rides in my office chair, and puts them into "bed". She lays them down, tucks them into a blanket, says "night night", lays down next to them, and pretends to snore.

She's going through a defiant streak. "No!" is her favorite word, and she spends more time than she used to hovering around things she knows she's not supposed to touch, checking to see if we're watching, and inching closer and closer toward whatever she's not supposed to be doing. And she's gotten quite good at the tantrums when we get in her way. She's also really really sweet, though. She gives us hugs and kisses.

When weather permits, we go to a playground at least once a day. She can play by herself: she goes down the slide over and over and digs in the sand. But these days she's thrilled when she sees other people there. She has friends who she will run to and yell "hi" when she sees them, and she even sort of tries to play with them. Yesterday, her friend Alex was having a bad day, and she went to him and offered him a toy and tried to give him a hug. She cheered him up with the scruffy face that she made "smelling" flowers, and he taught her how to roll down a hill.

Since the previous post, the sun/moon has not consistently been effective at preventing early morning hysterics, but it generally does seem to be helping.

She amazes us every day.

"Sun!"

I'm a very proud & happy mama today!

Since we started using the 'The Sleepeasy Solution' method for sleep training, Sylvia's been sleeping much much better -- going to sleep easier, putting herself back to sleep when she wakes up, and staying asleep longer. A few months ago, she started waking up earlier... and then earlier... and then earlier. It's been rough. According to the method, you're not supposed to take them out of bed until the designated 'wake-up time'. It's supposed to train them to stay in bed, but it just wasn't working anymore. Meanwhile, we've been awake way earlier than we wanted to be, and listening to our miserable baby girl. And then we've all been overly tired from not getting enough sleep, and that just makes everything harder. (And, no, putting her to bed earlier or later does not help. And some people might say 'maybe she doesn't need as much sleep', but she's really not been acting like a well-rested baby.)

So, we recently bought the 'Good Nite Lite' which is supposed to help this particular problem. At night, it lights up like a moon. At the time that you specify as the 'wake-up time', it switches to a sun. We got it on Thursday. We showed her the moon and the sun, and we told her when she went to bed that if she woke up and saw the moon, that meant that it was still bedtime so she should try to go back to sleep, but that she could get up when she saw the sun.

You're supposed to do a little training, where you have the sun come on at their usual wake-up time the first day, and then incrementally make it later to help train them to stay asleep later. So, the first day was pretty uneventful. The second day was a nightmare; she woke up really early, and was absolutely miserable when we reminded her that she needed to stay in bed until the sun came out. This was the third day. She woke up 15 minutes before the sun was going to come on. She stood up, looked at the moon, said "ohhhhh. oh no!" several times, but didn't cry, and really tried to go back to sleep. When she couldn't sleep, she just stood up looking out and saying, "ohhhh". We were watching the monitor and wondering how well the light was synced to the time on our phones and when we could go get her, when she broke out in a grin, pointed at the nightlight and called out, "Sun!" I almost cried. It was awesome.

Baby's first snow

I figured that Sylvia's first experience of snowfall deserved its own post. Here it is:

And here are her first steps in actual snow:

Here is the porch on Monday:

Tuesday:
and Thursday:

another progress report

Sylvia had her 18-month checkup this week, and I realized that I never did post anything about the 15-month visit. Both were very similar. The doctor asked questions, and we answered them. Sylvia squirmed and smiled and wasn't too troubled by the poking and prodding. She cried during her shots but recovered quickly. She was deemed perfect. According to their measure, her head is now almost normal, but that seems unlikely to me given how hard it still is to get shirts over her head.

I think she's still adjusting to being back home and recovering from the illness, but today was very nearly normal.

It's a real trip just seeing how much she picks up from day-to-day. When we were in Victoria, she learned that certain things belonged to Maria (her bottles) and certain things belonged to Kurt (his sippy cups, his bunny, and his trains), and she started following them around, trying to give them their things. She also learned that Maria usually wasn't particularly attached to whatever she was chewing on as long as there was SOMETHING to chew on, so she could make a trade if she wanted what Maria had. Before the trip, she would only say "all done" when she was done with food and wanted to be released from her high chair, but she learned from Kurt that she could use it in lots of situations. She also learned to say "gotcha" and that it's fun to flip light switches. I'm not sure if that sounds as impressive to other people as it is to me, but it blows my mind a little!

Sylvia is 19 months old

Today, we're flying home from our trip to Victoria. We'll get an official chair picture when we can, and we'll have height/weight stats soon. In the meantime, here is our very modern baby on a layover in San Francisco

Victoria in February (again)

When we visited last February, Victoria experienced a unique sunny spell, and all of Sylvia's rain clothes that we had bought especially for the trip remained completely dry. We've been making up for it this week!

On Monday, it hailed and then rained. On Tuesday, there was some snow. I've seen snow on the ground a few times, and I once saw a few flecks of snow fall from the sky, but this sight of a small layer of white stuff on the ground was very novel to me:

Jayne said that she hoped the snow would accumulate enough for the kids to play in it, but the weather reports assured us that it was not to be.

The next morning, we woke up to this:

And it was steadily falling through the morning and into the afternoon. We were brave enough to take the kids out briefly. Sylvia was concerned and suspicious - but OK as long as I was holding her. Kurt and Maria, on the other hand, were perfectly content.

Before the snow, we did manage to get the kids out and about every day. Here's Super Mom/"Aunt" Jayne taking all 3 kids to a playground:

And more evidence that the children did actually make it outdoors a few times:

Unfortunately, the snow hasn't been the only encumbrance. To varying degrees, most have us have been sick. Sylvia has been hit especially hard. She's had a fever for over a week now, and though she seemed to only be slightly bothered by it for the first several days, she was a very sad and pathetic baby for a while. We brought her to a walk-in clinic (despite being foreigners with no local health insurance, it was a 30-min wait and $65 charge for us see a very nice and apparently capable doctor). He checked her out and said that he didn't think there was anything to be worried about -- she probably just has a virus. She seems to be doing a lot better, and hopefully she'll be fully recovered just in time for us to leave tomorrow.

In spite of the combined efforts of germs and weather, we've had a lot of very good times. We've laughed and eaten and watched funny TV and, of course, played with the kids. I think the kids have generally enjoyed each other and having so many extra adults to shower them with attention. And, boy, have they been cute!

There are many more pictures of snow and cute babies which I will perhaps put together and post another time. But for now, I only have one more day here in the beautiful northwest with my very beloved friends, so I'm going to hit "publish post" and put the computer away.

Sylvia is 1-1/2

Sylvia is 18 months old!

I asked Max what I should write, and he said, "I don't know... this is why I don't blog.... 'Here's our baby! She's a monkey.'"

Anyway, Sylvia is doing well. She's active and friendly. She laughs at the mice in Cinderella. She yells "bah" to demand that we give her a z-bar, to announce that she is throwing a ball, and to indicate her excitement at the prospect of bath time. She has started playing a game where she covers her stuffed animals with a blanket, pats them, and says "nigh nigh". She's a real little person.

I had a treatment for my kidney stones a few weeks ago and was a little out of it. It seemed to make her a little anxious and needy, but she got over it as soon as I did. Since then, though, she seems to have been a little uncomfortable and grouchy. We haven't quite figured it out yet, but she's still mostly a very sweet and pleasant little girl. Who wants few things more than to eat crayons, drink bath water, and projectile spit out actual food and drink.

Anyway, here is our baby:

She is a monkey.