21 Months!

Dearest Leah,

This month has been super eventful and much better than the cranky-filled month of August. I'm not even sure where to start!  

 

Every morning when we get up, I shower, warm up your morning BA! (sippycup full of milk) and hand it over to you while singing a morning time song. You bounce and beam at me from your crib while reaching for your cup. And after drinking so much, so quickly that you are literally out of breath, you loiter. It must take a good 15 minutes to convince you to get out of your crib. You hand me your stuffed animals one at a time.

Sock Monkey, whom you offer a sip of milk to before handing her over.

Stuffed Monkey whom will, despite your best efforts, not sit up on the railing of your crib.

Cookie Monster.

And the Strawberry Shortcake doll I bought you from a garage sale.

THEN each of your three blankies...

 You recently became embarrasingly interested in your nostrils. You quite often have a finger in one of them, especially when you are sucking your thumb. You use the index finger on your right hand to plug up your nose. It's sort of adorable, but also a little inappropriate, so I just remind you to take it out and move on. 

Speaking of inappropriate! Earlier this month while taking your evening bath, we were playing and having a great ol' time. Until you laughed so hard that you pooped. Since you were facing me, I wasn't even exactly sure when it happened, until you handed me a nugget of it with your usual inflection of a question with a sound. "Uhhhaahhh???"  (although sometimes you say "Gwhaat?"), Anyhoo, a quick shower and a bleaching of the toys made everything a-okay. 

We started in a Co-Op this month! The experience of it for me has been a tad different than yours. But I think it's going to be better once I understand the politics in's and out's of it all. More on that if I get around to it later. If you don't know what a co-op is it's basically like a Pre-Pre-School, where there is one parent attending with each child, and 1-2 teachers. There are 12 kids in our class, and it's once a week for about 2.5 hours. It's starts with free play, then there is a snack about half way through. Then more play, then songs and a book, followed by the Goodbye song. It's essentially a way to build a community, meet Mom's with kids the same age and help your child learn social skills. They do have parts of the class where you sit in groups and discuss child development, parenting, and all related issues -(sleeping, eating, discipline, etc.) I think we're going to have a lot of fun. 

You have gotten better about having your diaper changed, but it still requires convincing. Last week we were in a bit of a time crunch and I didn't have time to do the usual song and dance to prepare you for what was coming. So your response was to first, scream bloody murder, and then to bite me. I was holding you, so you leaned into my chest and bit, well I guess you'd call it my pectoral.  HARD. You didn't draw blood, but you left a good bruise. And it hurt like a - it hurt a lot. So much so that I cried out the second it happened. That at least curbed your crying. So I told you that you hurt Momma, and showed you the mark. I repeated owwie, and boo-boo, until you started to calm yourself and appeared to understand that you had hurt me. It hasn't happened since and I think we're both pretty grateful for that!  

So, Halloween is coming up and I am SUPER excited. I love fall and Halloween has grown on me A LOT the last few years. I'm planning a family themed idea for costumes, but we'll see what comes of it. I already have your costume, but I have to see if your dad and I are brave enough to wear ours...

Baby girl, it is an honor to watch you grow, and I am so thankful to witness it. 

Can't wait to see what the next month brings!

Love, 
Momma