Friday, April 6, 2012

18 Months

Dear Z.O.E, Zoe!

You had two major verbal leaps this month.  We now have complete, multi-word sentences and phrases.  Like "I see it!"  and "Get down, kitty!".  Also, I swear, you're correctly using pronouns.  Because the other day, when you were running away from me squealing because I was trying to help you put on your pants, I said, "I'm not helping" and you repeated, "You're not helping"  I swear, this actually happened.  You have also used you->me appropriately.  Oh, and you repeated her first cuss word this month.  The f-word.  Because you don't go halfway.  (Bad mommy.)

Speaking of the pants, oh, the pants.  How I miss the days when I could just shove your little legs into pants and pull them up.  No longer.  You have to do it by yourself.  I can't even be anywhere near you.  You can get the pants on, it just takes forever, and multiple tries, and often they end up backwards, which is an affront to my analness.  But before the pants go on, there is a long process of you running/scrambling away from me saying "No!" so that I understand how unwelcome any help would be.  So that's fun.

The other contributing factor to the pants show is that now you sit on the potty.  We're still waiting for anything other than reading to actually occur on the potty, but after every diaper change (except the first one in the morning), you say, "Potty." and we say, "Do you want to go sit on the potty?" and you say, "OK!" (you have a reallllllllly cute inflection on OK, too) and run in there.  We're keeping 3 books in there, and you read all 3 each time, which gives you a decent amount of time to sit there.  I am very excited about this first step in potty training!

This all coincides with you moving up a room at school.  Moving up a room seems like it is more traumatic for the parents than it is for the Kid!  You have adjusted with absolutely no issue.  They had been sending you over for outside time with the bigger kid room for several weeks, so I think that helped.  And honestly, you were bored with your old room, and I think you were ready to welcome the new "work".  And all your friends had already gone over.  (Except 1, Brady, and you were asking to "See Bwa-dee" last night at dinner.  It was cute.  And heartbreaking.)  There are aspects of our parental adjustment that are awesome: easier drop-off/pick-up because we don't have to take shoes off to enter the room, laundry is done at school so no extra stuff to cart there and back each week, etc.  But there are things that are harder: no individual sheet each day (so no info on how you ate, slept, and poo'd), milk and snacks provided by the school (less control over what you eat - oh how I cringed when the teacher was telling me about how much you love animal crackers! (Of course you love them, you're my child.  You are genetically destined to love all things with sugar.  Which is exactly why I wasn't even introducing them to you.  Because let's face it: ever since you went to Toddler 1, yeah, you're not eating dinner very well any more.)), and generally new teachers to get to know and (hopefully) like.  The toddler room in general seems like a less coddley place.  And while you seem fine by it, it is hard for me!

I do have several stories for you.  I went to pick you up the other day.  You didn't notice me, because the teacher was about to read a book, and you love books.  All the other kids were wiggling around and only halfway paying attention, but you, you were sitting right at the teacher's knee, Indian style, staring up at her.  You didn't move the whole time, except your mouth to say the answers.  You looked totally enthralled, and the teacher kept commenting on your attention span.  She was also really impressed that you knew which animal made all the sounds, and she was expecting me to be impressed by your performance, which I wasn't, because I know you've known those sounds forEVER.  Old hat, baby. :-)  I was impressed by your attention, though.  You looked like such a big girl, sitting there and listening to the teacher.

And then yesterday morning when I went to drop you off, the teacher told me you gave her a heart attack the day before.  Apparently when you finished eating she told you to put up your dishes.  When she turned back around you were gone.  She couldn't find you anywhere.  She had to gather up all the other kids in a line like they do when y'all go outside, and she walked out of the room and saw that you had gone to the Infant Room and given your dishes to Miss Mary, because apparently that's where they go!  Funny, sweet, and a little heartbreaking that you miss your old room like that.

And one more, and I do think this one is truly funny: driving home with you and your Daddy the other day and we saw a fire truck.  Your Daddy was telling you about the truck and that it had a fireman driving it.
You: 'Sat?
Daddy: Fireman.  (But he said it very clearly, like Fire. Man.)
You: Fiyah mat?
Daddy: Yes.
You: HOT!  (holding your little hand out towards the fire truck in your sign for danger, hot!)
I laughed my ass off, kiddo.  Seriously.  Because you were cute, because you know fire is hot, and because of the double meaning of the thing.

Oh, and you've also started a bit of pretend play this month.  The other night you kept "feeding" a Dora doll your dinner.  And when you are at Gaga's, you'd lean over and put the bubble stick in front of your toy puppy's mouth and say, "Blow, puppy, blow really hard!"  And this morning you were chasing the cats with a cloth trying to get them to blow their noses, lol!

"Blooo, puppee, blo reall har!"
Hmm, what else?  First rodeo.  First time climbing up and sliding down the slide all by yourself.  First burger and fries (cringe).  First sip of milkshake (I cringed as you instantly started saying and signing more. Rather like the funnel cake.)  And first funnel cake.  Wow, this month has really been the month to end the your lifetime of clean eating.  Guess it had to happen some time.

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