21 & 22 Months

I truly can’t believe I have an almost two year old. 

Time seems to have a bone to pick with me, with no signs of ever slowing down. I haven’t even begun to plan your second birthday party, let alone gotten my act together to work on your big girl room. And let’s not even talk about the fact that “the nursery” is really just a half-painted free-for-all-room where clutter goes to die. 

Your little brother or sister isn’t even here yet, and I feel stretched so thin. {As evidenced by my lack of blogging and inability to keep up with your monthly posts.} 

But here is my best attempt to document the past two months, both equally awesome and awful. 

We dealt with quite a bout of illness in our house, not once but twice. Actually caused me to throw an all-out tantrum comparable to yours when I tell you “all done” with your plate of cheese. It all started with a double ear infection, which resulted in quite the allergic reaction to your antibiotic. Then a couple weeks later, you came down with an evil sinus infection that lasted nearly three weeks. One that kept you from sleeping for those three weeks. And because we’ve been working on sharing, you decided to give your yucky infection to mom and dad. So the whole house was in poor shape for a week or two. And the funny thing about sickness and not sleeping is the brutal reality that life and work and “maintaining” a house doesn’t let you stop, take a break, and get the rest you need. The show must go on!

Luckily, we’re all finally healthy, happy, and enjoying our summer evenings and weekends together! 

Little Sponge
Every single day seems to bring new adventure and learning.  As you’ve done since you were a baby, you are careful and deliberate with your actions. You impressively think before you act, and love to solve a good problem. You step over cracks, find the most efficient and safest route up and down stairs, bring us your plate and scoot in your chair when you are finished eating, and you endlessly open and close or find objects that fit together. We’ve started playing with big legos, and you’re obsessed. Anything you can put together and take apart and build keeps you occupied for days. But your all-time favorite thing? Transferring toys/cars/seashells/tiny objects from one container to the next or scooting those objects around in your stroller or shopping cart. You also take your coloring and reading quite seriously, and your favorite word at the moment is story. You would read 3 dozen books before bedtime if we let you. 

Vocabulary

Although we’re still working on phrases and sentence-forming, you know a countless number of words, can name most objects, and repeat everything we say. Your current favorite, said with the biggest grin I’ve ever seen, is Big Sister! You always know exactly what we’re saying and asking you to do, and you can point to just about anything we name in a room or a book. You consistently know a few letters, shapes, and colors, and can count to three. We can hear you counting in your room at night, uhn, who, tree - FIVE TOES. And you’ve grown leaps and bounds in patiently making requests, help please GiGi, cheese please, all done please, night-night mama, and with intense enthusiasm, BREAKFAST! Overall, I'd say you're a fairly quiet child - not the chatter box like your mama was *and still is*. But hearing you talk in your sweet, quiet, little voice is just about the sweetest sound I've ever heard in my life. 

Cute Factor

You’ve done some pretty cute, notable things lately. You started showing that you are “surprised” by dramatically opening your mouth and eyes really wide and gasping. Where, oh where did you learn to be a little drama queen? ;) And we bust into stitches every time your run - you wiggle your hips back and forth and look just like Cam from Modern Family. Although you haven’t quite mastered on “solid ground”, you have developed a love for jumping. You “jum-jum-jum” in your bed every night after we tuck you in. And although you don’t really understand, you love to pull up your shirt, stick out your belly as far as it will go, and point to it and say “baaaby” because your belly looks exactly like mine these days. Maybe you are starting to understand that your world is about to be rocked? 

Running like Cam with "The Hip Wiggle"

"Baaay-bee" 

Wild and crazy hair after nap time 

Discipline

We have good days and bad days. Good weeks and bad weeks. You tend to act out when you’re tired or not feeling well {rightfully so}, but it can be beyond perplexing and downright maddening. We’ve done everything from ignoring to timeouts. *Funny story* You absolutely know you’re not supposed to throw your milk, and you did it anyway one morning. Dad sternly told you, “we do not throw our milk, Lyla”. And put it back on the table. You did it again. So, he put you in the corner, had you put your hands on the wall, and counted to 10.  After timeout, you went back to your little table, chucked your milk across the room, and immediately put yourself in timeout and put your hands on the wall. Giggling the whole time. 

A work in progress, I guess. 

Foodie Regression
I have no idea what happened to my diverse-palletted baby who was desperate to try any and all cuisines. I felt so proud having such a good little eater. You used to eat everything we gave you, no matter the texture, color, or flavor. Now? It's a crap shoot. Some days you like green beans. Most days you spit them out. You used to eat peanut butter sandwiches on the daily. Now, you will only eat them when I pull off the crust...and even then you may turn your nose up. You despise vegetables and meat all of a sudden, and you pick and choose when you want to use a fork and spoon. The only food items I can always count on are fruit and cheese. Some days, that's all that goes in your belly. *Sigh*

Aversions
You aren't a huge fan of the car. Sometimes you fuss, sometimes you scream. You always beg for the little strap that has silk on it so you can soothe yourself and suck your thumb. Again, this is something new. All I know is that no matter what, you absolutely, positively will not sleep in the car. And if you do, it's for approximately 6 minutes, and then you won't nap the rest of the day. 

Although you do love babies, you absolutely dislike when I'm holding them. This may present a problem in a few months. 

You are most definitely not a morning person. Just like your dad, auntie, and GiGi, it takes you quite a bit to warm up in the mornings. You're usually quite needy and cuddly, and do not tolerate much of anything in the mornings besides our laps and breakfast. 

You aren't a huge fan of anything that is sudden, loud, or unpredictable. Like bubbles and sprinklers. You've started to warm up to bubbles, but you just don't like them to come near you. And the hose or sprinkler? Goodness. Way too unpredictable {and cold} for you! And it took you awhile to get used to your little kiddie pool. But once you did, we waited until you had pruney fingers and toes, and you still threw a tantrum when we had you get out. 

Dad can always help you get over your fears 

Hating the sprinkler ...

...even while running through with Dad :( 

Hating the kiddie pool {Gabe is going to kill me for this picture} 

See. Now that's not so bad

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I love everything about you, Little Lady Ly. Every moment spent with you is so sweet. Excited to see what these next couple of months bring until you are "tee-eww"!