kate_nepveu | SteelyKid at 23 months (Reply)

SteelyKid is 23 months old today.

Mostly language again/still these last two months. Indeed I am principally carving out time for this so that I can post her new words (which I am putting at the end) and then stop keeping track, because it's taking up way too much of my time. She's almost doubled her capacity in two months.

In addition to her new words, she is improving at her enunciation, particularly her consonants at the ends and in the middle of words. The complexity of her expressive language is also increasing markedly: almost everything is at least two-word phrases now; she says "I'm going to (verb)" and "I got a (noun)"; and she uses "sleep" (imperative), "sleeping," and "sleepy" all in their distinct and correct meanings. (Imperatives are big right now. Ones I heard today alone are "sit down," "do it," "throw it," and "sleep.")

(When she graduated to the toddler classroom a couple of weeks ago, she was given a "most talkative" certificate from her old class.)

On June 14 she was 28 pounds 3 ounces, which is nearly a three-pound gain over two months prior and puts her back on her prior growth curve of 75th percentile plus, after four months of no gain, so that's good.

She is seriously into transportation these days, as her vocabulary list suggests. ("Driving" is the best thing ever.) When she's not playing with construction equipment, she's putting her stuffed animals down for naps, pretending in her playhouse, doing yardwork (no, I'm serious, she rakes, puts yard litter into barrels, and then demands that we do the same), and jumping up and down/being thrown up in the air/flopping upside down/etc. Also watching Sesame Street on YouTube when cranky. Still a huge animal fan and now the veteran of several petting zoos; we literally spent 90 minutes around the pen at her first, where she attempted to summon the goats by sheer volume: "Oh! Goat!" We have various cute pictures at zoos, petting and otherwise, that will eventually make it to the Internet. The final big interest is water. Big pools, little pools, toy sinks, beaches: all grand.

After our rough patch at the end of May, her health has been good except for a bit of irritability caused by her second molars coming in (the bottom ones were fully in a couple of weeks ago, and I think the top ones have been following, but it's harder to see them). Once we re-confined her to her crib with a crib tent, she's been sleeping pretty well. We're thinking about moving her to a bed, though, as she did well on cots at our parents—indeed, she asked to fall asleep on it one night instead of in my arms—and it might make weekend naps easier if the routine is more like daycare. Still using her pacifier to sleep, though it's the end of an era, as the pacifier on her second and final little red dog (seen in many pictures previously) broke at the end of May. And she's starting to be quite interested in the elimination of body wastes, so we'll be starting on the whole potty-training process soon.

The other major new thing is her saying "sorry" and hugging and kissing us when we are hurt or upset. I don't put too much stock in her genuine understanding/sincerity, because hey, toddler, but it is a strong demonstration of social awareness.

And now I have a brief to write, so lists:

Vocabulary I missed two months ago: