Olive: 21 Months and 13 Days

I love 21-month-olds. They are so fun. So smart. So talkative. And so NOT terrible. Not yet, not for a few more months (years? Can you tell we're dealing with a slightly different breed of child in the older spectrum?).

Olive is becoming a funny little person. She does things that she is intending to be jokes, like opening her mouth as wide as she can while there's food in it. Or making funny faces while shaking her head back and forth. Lots of little things. She loves making us laugh.

She puts 5-6 words together. "Dere it is, righ dere!" is a frequently heard phrase. She actually said her full name the other day. We were quizzing them (Milo mainly) on his name and address, and Olive said "Olive Lanefurrr." Pretty good.

She loves books. Favorites are Brown Bear Brown Bear, Farmer in the Dell ("Farmer Dell!"), Moo Baa La La La, and Cat Skidoo.

Olive likes to dance, especially to spin around and get dizzy. Mostly just dancing to the Dora clean-up song. After we play it 3 or 4 times to clean up, we play it one more time to just have a dance party. Both kids love this part of the routine.

Lately, Olive has gotten into her babies. She has a couple of dolls that she will carry around. She doesn't do a lot of nurturing or pretend play with them, with the exception of grabbing dishtowels and tucking them in. She does ask me to give them hugs and kisses sometimes. This is the one instance of a toy that Olive led the way on, and Milo picked it up from her. He's into the babies right now too.

Speaking of toys, Olive loves trains and puzzles, both of which came from Milo's interests. They also both love watching Dinosaur Train, and not much else in the way of TV. (Actually, Milo likes other things, but Olive has no interest in Thomas.)

She is a decent eater. Finally has 4 molars, though still missing a few teeth back near the back. She often asks for us to "cuddit" meaning cut up her food. And then she only eats the part that hasn't been cut. She's big on bread and always eats the bread portion of her meal first. Then fruit. Then maybe the rest of it. Or not, you just never know.

She is still a cuddler, though she is often too busy for it. She gives excellent hugs and kisses. Wonderful smiles, adorable dimples. Her hair is getting long-ish, still has bangs. She still refuses to keep hair clips or bands in.

She has gone pee in the potty once. I am considering using Thanksgiving weekend for potty training, but we have a lot planned (away from our house, and I just don't know how the grandparents feel about a bunch of pee on their floor). I guess we could do it the pull-ups way instead of the panties way.

Olive has a husky little voice, and also a high shrieky voice. Whatever she's in the mood for, I guess. I've caught her singing to herself a few times, mostly the ABCs I think. Hard to say.

I don't have any official stats for her, but I think she's tall. She weighs 29 pounds according to our bathroom scale. She wears size 6.5 W shoes. She's super picky about shoes, too.

What more can I say? Olive is adorable and fun and sweet and kind (she says "sorry sorry sorreee" to Milo if she hurts him. Sometimes tries to hug him (which he usually shrugs off). Super cute.). I'm just so glad she's mine.

Milo's 21-Month Update

Wow, this monthly update caught me by surprise. How can it be the 21st already? Didn't I just write one of these updates?

What is Milo up to these days? He's huge, for one. Likely still hovering around 30-32 pounds, and getting taller all the time. He is maybe half an inch from bonking his head on the underside of our kitchen counter. I dread the day he first stands up under the counter and hits his head. Hard. There will be much howling and shedding of tears.

Physically, Milo is active. He runs, he jumps, he climbs. Sometimes he seems to push himself to see just what he can do. The other day he was leaning on the coffee table, then decided to put his feet up on the couch. So his feet on the couch, his hands on the coffee table, he pushed himself up into a pyramid. Made me nervous. Did not want to see him slip and bang his entire face on the table.

Speaking of that, Milo almost always has a bruise somewhere. He is currently sporting a large bruise just under his eyebrow, another on his cheek, some scratches along his jawline, and a large bruise on his forearm. I only know of the origins of one of these battle scars. 

Milo is getting pretty good at testing the limits. He knows he should not get near the fireplace when it is hot, but he'll just barely perch on the edge of the hearth, then look at me slyly, wondering if I'm going to tell him no. It's really time for me and Andrew to figure out our plan for disciplining, as reminding him over and over again what is against the rules is not really getting us anywhere. Milo is a good kid, and he generally doesn't keep trying to do the misbehavior when we tell him to stop, but it's that five or ten minutes later he's doing it again that is problematic. I'm afraid he's just going to be running over us before long if we don't learn how to reinforce the rules (of which there are not many, really).

Milo loves music. He is always asking for a song. Whining for a song, really. He is especially entranced by the musical tabletop Christmas tree decoration we have, and will demand "more song" over and over. And every time we say "Ask nicely, Milo. What do you say?" and he frantically slaps at his chest, giving the sign for please. Man, he loves that tree. He also loves dancing, and does this awesome dance where he madly swings his arms, kind of twisting around and bouncing. The other day he was exuberantly clapping when a song came on, and he accidentally whacked me in the face. 

He seems to have really picked up on the concept of Santa Claus in the last couple of weeks. "An Cwaus," he says, "oh, oh, oh." He recognizes reindeer. He thoroughly enjoys listening to the book Grandma and Grandpa recorded for him last year, Hallmark's "The Night Before Christmas" Recordable Storybook. At the end he waves to Santa and says "Byebye An Cwaus."

Language continues to get better and better. Pronunciation is better, he is always using new words or new phrases. He has started saying "uh-oh, spaghetti o's," though it sounds more like "uh-oh, etti o's." He uses adjectives all the time and is figuring out how to describe objects. He crosses his arms and says "Brrrr, cold," and shivers. He has trouble getting all the sounds or syllables in when he's trying to say something with a lot of them. Snowman becomes no-man. Dinosaur is dine-saur. Bathtub is Ath-tub His r's often sound like w's. Twuck. Twee. He makes animal sounds out of nowhere and has started panting like a puppy. He's utterly charming.

He still likes to give my belly kisses. Not sure how much he knows about the upcoming baby. He has repeated her name, but can't tell you what it is if you ask (so don't even try!). We're moving Milo to his big boy bed, a twin mattress on the floor, in just a couple days. I have no idea how he's going to do with this. We've been reading a lot about how Elmo went from a crib to a big kids' bed, so I hope that's helping prepare him.

He has peed on the potty about three times. We always give him an opportunity to sit on the potty before he gets in the bathtub, and so far those three times have been purely accidental. But we make a big freaking deal about how great it was that he did that and how big he's getting and all that, and this last time he actually clapped along with Daddy and seemed to soak up the praise. And he occasionally comments out of the blue, "peepee," and sort of touches his pants, and we're pretty sure that he knows he just peed. All good steps toward potty training, I think, though it's still a ways off realistically. 

Milo is definitely getting to be a little toddler with his own opinions. He equally charms and frustrates me on a daily basis. Sometimes I have absolutely no idea what to do with him, and I think, really? We're really about to have another and I haven't even figured out the first one yet? But I suppose I'll never figure it out. He's always going to be throwing another curve ball at me. And that's just fine by me.