23 Month Update

 

* The biggest monumental thing that happened this month was that Bimmer used the potty! On March 27th, she peed on the potty for the first time and got a gold sticker, jelly bean, the works. Daycare had just started that week with trying the kids on the potty. Of course, that was the only time she went then for weeks, but that was OK. They told us she was anxious to try each day and was seeing other kids use it. I'm OK with the introduction and I'm not pushing it. She's not even two yet!

 

* Bimmer is expanding her vocabulary a lot more lately to include words that are not nouns. She'll say things like "Dark in there" or "Mama's coming." She uses the words "this" and "that." She is grasping the concepts of up and down, in and out, off and on. I may not always understand all the words in a sentence, but she'll tell me about the moon being made out of cheese or playing outside on the slides at school. She is expanding her animal knowledge and now can say gator and flamingo. (Or well, "mingo.") She knows almost all the colors, we're just trying to work on matching the words to the actual colors. If you ask her to name colors, she'll list "red, yellow, blue, green" etc. The only ones she seems to get right a lot of the time are yellow and pink. Perhaps those are her faves? Since she has mastered animals and their noises, we're working now on colors and numbers. She can count to ten in both English and Spanish, but with prodding. If you ask her to actually count something physical, she still goes "one, two, one!" At least she grasps the concept?

 

* On a whim, I took the front of her crib off. We've been battling the whole waking up and wanting to sleep with us issue now for several months. So I figured it was worth a try. The first night, she went down without incident, but about 2 hours later, she woke up crying. I went in and consoled her and she went back to sleep... for about twenty minutes. I eventually went in and laid in bed with her. Yes, I laid in the toddler bed, half ass hanging off, until she fell asleep. That was at about 11:45pm and she slept in her bed until 7am! It has been AGES it feels like since that has happened! The rest of the weekend went pretty well. Fingers crossed the freedom of the toddler bed is what she needed to be OK sleeping through the night in her own bed. She would wake up in the morning and talk about her "big girl bed."

 

* One of the sweetest things a mom can hear is for her child to tell her that they love her. Or so I assume. The first thing Bimmer said that she loved? Kimhead. And then I think it was cheese. In early April, I decided to work on this matter. She did start repeating me when I told her to say "I love Daddy" or "I love Mommy." It was sweet and so cute, but I was anxious for the day when she would say it on her own accord. About a week later, her and Puff were in the other room and she came running in to me to tell me that Daddy was reading her books. I told her that I loved her and asked her for a kiss. After she leaned in and kissed me, she said "I lub you." And got the biggest smile on her face! Oh - kill me now! That kid!

 

* Besides her non-stop of wanting us to read books (current fave is "Zoola Palooza") she has also discovered stickers. And I am inclined to let her play with them, because she can honestly sit still and entertain herself for much longer playing with stickers than anything else. I splurged on a Melissa & Doug reuseable sticker pad back in the winter, and she now climbs up to the table in our office and plays with it on her own. I love that she is figuring out how to play by herself. As an only child myself, I was always having to figure that out. And since we don't know yet if she will be an only child or not, I like that she's at least trying.

 

* There are two boys in Bimmer's class who just got baby brothers in the past month, and another little girl is going to be a big sister to a brother soon. So it doesn't really surprise me, but at least twice this past week, Bimmer has said "Dee Dee brudder?" Maybe this is the sign from the universe I'd been needing to decide of we wanted a second kid? Perhaps.