19 months

Hm, I was all ready to brag on you and your pretend play, but then I read last month's update, and it turns out you've already been doing that.  Old news, baby.  But you have really taken off with it.

We weaned your morning feeding this last month, so you're down to just nights.  I really thought I had blogged this, but I can't find it, so... I had been thinking about weaning your mornings for a while.  It would give me extra time, and you extra sleep.  But it would be a bit sad-making, not to have our time in the mornings.  So I waited and I delayed... one morning, a few weeks ago, on a weekend, Daddy brought you down to our bed, as normal for a Saturday morning.  You confiscated his phone and played and played and played, and after a while, I realized you should have been yelling for boobies, but you weren't.  I said, "Zoë, do you want boobies... or milk?"  You looked up and said, "Milk!"  I was stunned.  So I asked once more, to confirm. "Zoë, do you want boobies?"  You said, "No."  And you had milk, and have had milk every day since.

Sticking a pea into your belly button.

Singing: you've added several new songs to your repertoire.  But what's really got me excited is that you've started to carry a bit of a tune.  I mean, you still basically yell the songs at the top of your lungs, but with notes; sometimes you wander around humming, and either way, I can tell what you're singing/humming from the tune.  Pretty cool, Baby Squish.

A new song-ish thing that you're doing is "Ring Around the Rosey".  You love that game!  You grab a blanket and hold it up and sing,
"Ring around da rosies
Pocket full da posies
ASHES, ASHES
Fa fall DOWN!!!"
And down you fall.  It is super cute!

At your 18 month check-up, the doctor asked how many words you had, and I told her that I stopped counting when you went over 100 four months ago and your Daddy was telling her that you can say "refrigerator".  The doctor asked us if you'd perform, and you did!  And she thought it was *awesome*.  Because you're awesome.  You also crawled all over us yelling "I need more, please!" (referring to fiddlesticks) demonstrating both your use of pronouns and your multiple word sentences (and courtesy) in one fell swoop.  Nicely done.

2 other things that have floored me this month.  You've learned to play "Memory".  I've got the game on the iPad and at first you were just looking at the animals and watching me play it, but you quickly caught on that you were supposed to match the animals, and what really amazes me is that you honestly remember where the animals are, even if you saw them several turns ago!  Another game that you really impressed me with is one where it shows you 4 shapes and asks you to identify which one is the whatever.  Like, "Show me the circle."  It has easy stuff, like circle, square, and heart, but it also has harder stuff that you didn't know like oval, clover, and octagon.  What amazed me is that when it would ask you for a hard one that you didn't know, I watched you look at the other 3 and rule them out and then select the correct answer.  This may seem like a small thing, but it is SO SMART of you.  You are demonstrating reasoning.  At 19 months old.  You absolutely amaze me.

I love you!
Mommy