Abbie at 21 months

On Sunday, Abbie turned 21 months old.  I can’t believe in 3 months she’ll be 2 years old.  I remember when she was a newborn and all the sleepless nights like it was yesterday.

Abbie’s newest thing this week is saying “Zat?” for "What’s that?”.  She does it all the time now and it’s pretty funny.  She’ll usually repeat whatever you tell her it is and it’s amazing at how she can remember it!  The other day we pulled into the garage and Mark and Abbie were in the car and a huge grasshopper was on the rear window on the drivers side.  (Opposite side Abbie is on.)  She, of course, saw it right away and said “Zat?! Zat?!” while furiously pointing at it.  Mark told her it was a grasshopper, and I think her version of it was more like “grassapopper”.  The next time we went down to the car, she was asking for the “grassapapaper”.  Close enough.  She tends to add “a’s” to things, which is pretty funny, especially since it sounds a little Italian.  She says things like “Helpa mommy” all the time.

She regularly puts 2-5 words together now.  She likes to talk about Sadie Roo and Ollie a lot.  She loves playing with her dogs, and we just got her a little tricycle so she’s always asking to ride her bike.  She loves going to the park and doing anything outside, and she’s not at all afraid to get dirty.  She’s started going down the slides by herself, but she’s still terrified of the swings.

She can count to 3 now.  She just started doing that this week.  She still doesn’t recognize numbers, but she can count to three and she’ll often point out things there are 2 or 3 of and say “two horses” or “three slides” or whatever.  She pretty much points out anything she can name, which is a little exhausting when you’re in the car because she will keep repeating whatever she’s saying until you acknowledge her in some way.  So you can forget having any sort of decent conversation since you have to say “Yes Abbie” about 14 times every mile.

She’s pretty much out of all of her 18 month clothes.  They’re still big enough for her, she has plenty of room that way, but they’re all way to short for her.  Pants are capris, t-shirts are belly shirts, and dresses barely cover her diaper.  And when we put her in the footed pajamas that are size 18 month, she can’t even straighten out her legs.  She wears a size 6 – 6.5 shoe and a size 5 diaper.  I think I’m going to start potty training her this summer because she often tells us when she needs to be changed, especially if she poops.  She goes to bed around 8:30pm and gets up between 8-9am, and she usually naps from 2-4pm, sometimes more, sometimes less.

She’s a very curious little girl.  She LOVES to help and I cannot do any chores around her without her trying to “help”.  I usually try to give her some sort of job so she can feel like she’s contributing.  She loves to pull the wagon all the way to the recycling bins for me.  It’s like 2 blocks away, and part of it is uphill, but she doesn’t want me touching the wagon at all.  So usually I pull her by the hand and she pulls the wagon.  She’s not one to sit quietly and play by herself for any stretch of time.  Usually if she’s quiet, she’s getting into something she’s not supposed to be into.  Sometimes she’ll look at her books by herself for a while, but we’re still working on getting her to play independently for any sizeable amount of time.  She doesn’t really watch TV either.  She’ll look at it for 30 seconds max if there is a cartoon or animals or babies on, but then she’s off doing something else.  I always said I didn’t want to use the TV as a babysitter, but she wouldn’t let me even if I tried.  She can be a handful, but her good qualities outweigh her bad by 100 to 1.