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!

Toddler Tales

My daughter is hysterical. Here are some anecdotes that I’ve been sitting on for a while (interspersed with cute pictures which are totally unrelated to the stories)…

Recruitment:

We were on a morning outing one day while Max was out of town. I think Sylvia was a little sick of spending all her time with me and starved for other company. We spent some time at the playground, and Sylvia was playing with a little boy a few months younger than her. It was time for him to go home, and Sylvia tried to follow him and threw such a fit that we started heading home ourselves. Along the way, a little girl who’s a few weeks older than Sylvia spotted us and called out “hi!” from her upstairs porch. Sylvia saw her and started screaming “Up! Up! Up!”, and Kira tried to squeeze through the bars while screaming “Dowwwwn!” Both girls started crying when I said “bye” to Kira and started to walk away, so Sylvia and I eventually went up and asked Kira’s dad if she could come out to play. We agreed to meet back at the playground in a few minutes. While we were waiting, Sylvia heard a cry from a nearby apartment and ran off straight to her friend RJ’s porch and started chanting “hi! hi! hi!” until his mom decided to bring him out. Kira eventually joined the other 2, and Sylvia thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of her first attempt at party planning.

Messy:

Sylvia and I were going through the grocery store. She was sitting in the cart, holding her little Big Bird doll and her “spill-proof” snack container. I’m going along and focused on my shopping list when I see Big Bird’s head has been shoved into the snack container. Sylvia is saying “yum yum yum” with delight while “sharing” her Cheerios with Big Bird. Sylvia pulls out Big Bird, who brings several Cheerios with him, which then scatter on the floor. Before I have time to react, Sylvia is pulling out more Cheerios and throwing them on the floor. I say, “What are you doing?!?” Sylvia’s eyes get very big. She points at the floor but is still looking me straight in the eye and says, “Messy!”

Baby:

All three of us were at the zoo. I saw a family with a newborn, and I pointed out the baby to Sylvia. She ran over to them, pointed up at the baby, announced “Baby!” and then reached up, obviously demanding that the baby should be given to her immediately. The parents laughed and asked if she was available to babysit. (This was actually a repeat of an almost identical situation with a puppy outside a restaurant, instead of a baby at the zoo. Interestingly, the pet owner was not nearly as good-natured about it as the parent.)

Dog whisperer:

A few weeks ago, we visited family & friends in San Diego. We left early, Sylvia slept most of the way, and we got to Max’s parents house without much drama or hassle. When we parked, Sylvia seemed to recognize the house and to be pretty happy to be there. She ran into the house, went straight for the back door, and immediately found the dogs. She got so excited and ran to them. Once she was about a foot away, she raised her hand, shook a finger at them and yelled “sit down!” This (along with the occasional “ssshh”) has since been her standard greetings for all dogs.

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