Late, per usual but C is 20 months old. This was probably her last full month as an only child. She somehow gets funnier and sweeter and more wonderful every day. Watching her grow is the best, and while I would gratefully take all the time in the world with just her, I’m so excited to see her grow into her big sister role, too.
C at 20 Months
Exactly what I said last month: I’m not sure how many different ways I can say that C is so fun, but that (and, “I’m obsessed with her,” and, “I adore her,” and, “She’s so sweet”) is what I say about a hundred times a day, often to no one in particular.
It’s true. She’s awesome. C is so fun and so funny. She has excellent comedic timing and a big personality, and she makes us laugh every day. She has lots of strong toddler opinions, and she makes them known. But she is still very adaptable and the very sweetest. She’s great at playing by herself, and her imagination seems to be going wild. She loves pretending to cook, feed us, clean, and talk on the phone, and she pretends her stuffed animals are doing all that stuff, too.
She still loves buckles, and wants to spend extra time in carts, her car seat, and her booster seat practicing and then signing for help when she clicks the buckle into place but can’t get it undone. I know they make a device to help little kids unbuckle themselves, but I’m not sure she’s ready for that level of responsibility. C also loves to throw/catch balls, wrestle around, play with race cars, build and knock over towers, and be chased around the house. She is way faster than my late-pregnancy self, but she kindly slows down when she’s ready to be caught.
She loves to see what I’m cooking and snack on ingredients, help get laundry out of the dryer and unload the dishwasher, take things to the trash, guide the vacuum and mop, and undo (or redo) any attempt at organization she can reach.
We call C an outside kid because she is always so happy to be outside – rain or shine – and she gets crabby when she’s been inside too long. The temps are finally getting cooler, so we’re outside a little more than we were in the dead of summer. We’re both loving it. We often start the morning with a walk in the shady woods. C loves drawing with chalk, playing with our bubbles guns (which she recently figured out how to use independently), and helping me with yard work. She also loves evening adventures to the creek behind our house. Jack is mostly in charge of those these days because the slope down to the creek is steep and, like I said, my agility is not really there at the moment.
C is a little athlete and she really doesn’t stop moving. Everyone who spends time with her comments on this. I can’t imagine what she’d do if she wasn’t moving all the time because it’s really all I’ve ever known. She loves experimenting with new ways to walk, doing sprints down our front hall, rolling around on the couch and ottoman, and trying to climb everything. She’s so good at stairs that I sometimes get lazy with our baby gates; I know she can handle going up and down, and I’m never far behind.
We were watching old videos of her the other day and Jack pointed out how, even in the ones where her face looks similar, one big difference is that her legs are so much more muscular. As they should be for how much she exercises! She’s crazy strong.
She loves to point at things so we’ll tell her what they are. If we get it wrong, she’ll continue pointing and shake her head at us till we provide the correct answer. She’s also great at finding the correct object/animal/color/body part when asked.
And we’re getting more and more words from our little physically-motivated toddler, which is so fun. I hear her test out a new word or three almost every day and she strings two together here and there. Her little voice is the best, and I love having more ways to communicate with her.
C loves dogs and other animals, dolls, books, pictures, mirrors, music, sunglasses, running errands, big kids, helping Jack with work, playing with water, and anything she can climb.
She loves dancing, being carried while you run or dance, and being spun around. We love finding new ways to make her giggle.
C lights up when you clap and tell her she did a good job. She also claps whenever she thinks she did a good job. She loves books, and especially likes pointing at everything in a book so you’ll tell her what it is. Sometimes, she also goes off and sits by herself and looks through her books, babbling to herself, which is adorable. And while she’s pretty easygoing about lots of things, she really does not like sitting still for diaper or clothing changes. Nighttime teeth brushing is not her favorite either.
C got her top two-year molars this month. She’s acting like the bottom ones are bothering her a bit. But if I thought the top ones were hard to get eyes on, the bottom ones are going to be even trickier.
Sleep
I don’t have the slightest clue what was going on with her sleep this month, but it was hard. She was up for hours in the middle of the night, multiple times a week. Molars? Illness? 18-month regression, part 3? Who knows. And then she’d get up early and get a grand total of 6 or 7 hours of sleep. Jack and I were getting 3 or 4 because even though only one of us would be in her room at a time, the other couldn’t fall back to sleep knowing she was having a hard time and we might need to go help at any point. It was rough.
It seems to be getting better in the last week or so, but oof.
She still doesn’t really use blankets on the bed, but we have them rolled up as “bumpers” because she kept hitting her head on the railings in the dark. She occasionally plays with using them as blankets and pillows, but mostly they stay at the edges of the bed.
I usually give her some milk and hold her hand, and then she rolls away. More and more, she wants to try to fall asleep without you touching her, so I just sing or sit there and answer if she calls for me. But if it’s taking a while and she seems restless, I ask if she wants me to hold her, and she usually says yes. It takes between 20-30 minutes most nights and naps. If it’s taking more than 45, she sometimes requests Jack or I tap him in. We’re practicing more bedtimes with him so we have more flexibility once her baby brother comes, and it’s definitely easier to have him help now that she doesn’t nurse.
She has mostly been leaving her room in the morning and happily announcing she’s awake by coming into our room or standing at the top of the stairs and calling, “Mom! Dad!”
Eating
C eats very well most of the time, but a couple weeks ago, I wondered if we had suddenly entered the picky toddler phase. Her stretches of eating less usually coincide with illness or teething, and I guess both of those things applied earlier this month. But it was unlike anything we’d seen. She pretty much drank milk and Fairlife chocolate milk and ate chips. We offered all her other favorite things, from vegetables and fruits, to eggs, cheese, and guacamole. And they were all nos, until they magically weren’t about a week ago.
We only offer dessert occasionally, and C is only interested about half the time. Even then, she only ever wants a few bites. But she does seem to like whipped cream, ice cream, and chocolate. She was all over the place during my haircut last week, but she did entertain herself briefly with three squares of dark chocolate.
We eat dinner as a family, and C and I usually eat breakfasts and lunches together. She snacks within reason. We usually try to avoid big snacks too close to meals. If she’s hungry, she does well with fruit and veggies as “appetizers.” Many days it seems like she hardly eats anything. Others, I’m shocked that she’s eating so much.
C started rejecting her high chair earlier this month and we had a couple days of absolute meltdowns during dinner when we tried to get her to sit in it. So, now she sits in a booster seat.
C still loves water but is more curious about other drinks now. We give her tastes when she asks. She has changed her tune on chocolate milk. Since we buy a low-sugar kind, we let her have it pretty liberally. Or, we did until she started drinking it so enthusiastically she threw up. Now, she gets it in smaller quantities. Anytime she sees us drink water mixed with LMNT packets, she comes over to finish our glass for us. Fortunately, she still loves water, and she’s very big on ice.
Schedule
This has changed! Since C started sleeping in her big bed, she (mostly) started waking up much earlier than before. For a while, she was still napping around 3 and going to bed around 10. That was just not working for us – and we were pretty sure she wasn’t getting the sleep she needed.
So, even though intentionally altering her schedule had never worked for us before, we decided we had to try. She (mostly) gets up between 7 and 8 these days; I still don’t wake her unless I have to. And then I started pulling her nap time to sometime between 1 and 2, thought it’s usually closer to 2. I prepared myself for shorter naps. But that didn’t really happen. She naps for 1.5 to 2 hours most of the time, and if she’s going longer, I typically wake her up. I don’t let her sleep past 4 anymore. And then we can usually get her to bed around 9.
The difference between 9pm and 10pm doesn’t sound like a lot, and probably sounds even smaller if you have a kid who goes to bed at 7 or 8. But for me, it’s huge. It’s the difference between, “Bed time is taking longer than usual, but I can still hang out with my husband / relax by myself / finish up chores before I need to sleep,” and “Oh, my gosh, can you please fall asleep right this second because I need to be asleep in like 15 minutes and also still need to start laundry?”
We still usually fit most of our plans into the pre-nap time. I usually let her get up whenever she naturally does, and then we have breakfast and clean up. Then we run errands, go outside, or go on play dates.
We eat lunch around noon, and then she plays or helps while I clean up. Her nap generally starts between 1:15 and 2:15 and ends between 3 and 4. After her nap, she’s often ready to go outside and play or play with her toys as soon as she’s had a snack and some cuddles. As part of moving her schedule forward a bit, I’ve been trying to get dinner together earlier. I try to involve her in the prep process if she’s interested or bounce between the kitchen and the play room.
We eat dinner between 6:30 and 7, maybe squeeze in a little more outside time, and let her get all her energy out by running all over the couch, tumbling around on her Nugget, or climbing up and down the stairs. I get her up to bed once she crashes or when she admits to being ready. It’s usually between 8:30 and 8:45, and she’s typically asleep a few minutes after 9.
Things I Don’t Want to Forget
- How many different ways she sleeps now that she has all the space in her new bed. She uses the whole thing.
- She gets frustrated with having a ponytail and insists on going through most of the day with her hair in her face. This also bothers her, and she spends a lot of time swiping it out of her eyes. It’s starting to get long enough to tuck behind her ears now. Such a big kid.
- Her “please” sign has gotten lazy, and she’ll usually just swipe an arm across her chest or belly and give you a look, because you know what she wants already, and she knows it.
- She loves signing “again” and saying something that sounds vaguely like “again” when she hears a song she likes or wants you to keep reading the same book. We have been listening to “The Circle of Life” and reading the same Bluey books over and over thanks to this request.
- When we get out of the car at home, she gives me a big hug and then almost always points at the sidewalk chalk or toy car in our garage to let me know she wants to stay outside.
- She has the best eyesight and spots ants, other bugs, and birds from weirdly far away.
- She still loves to play with my makeup and clothes while I get ready. This mostly amounts to getting all my stuff out and strewing it across the room. But it’s sweet and takes all of five minutes to clean up later. Sometimes, she pretends to put various products on herself. And sometimes there’s still a little makeup on a brush and she ends up with blush on her nose. We got her a fake makeup kit. She loves it.
- C still loves the tags on her toys and rubbing her fingers on anything that vaguely resembles tags or nubs. She plays with the strings on my shorts, the extra length on my watch, my hair, the diamond on my engagement ring, and the strap on my bra while she’s winding down. She’ll absentmindedly play with the fringe on a blanket or a tag on her toy while she’s playing.
- She’ll randomly climb onto your lap and kiss you. It’s like she just realized she loves you so much that she has to give you a kiss right now.
- She likes to duck between your legs when you’re standing, and she’ll go back and forth for a while before she gets tired of the game.
- When I pick her up, sometimes she’ll lay her head on my shoulder and just go totally limp for a few minutes.
- Her squeals and babbles. She has a lot to say.
- When she doesn’t want to be put down, she’ll pull her knees into her chest and refuse to put her feet on the floor.
- When she doesn’t want to be picked up, she makes her armpits go limp so she just slides through your grip.
- She has the best, most genuine giggle ever.
- Whether you’re laying on the floor or sitting on the couch, she treats you like a jungle gym and climbs and rolls all over you.
- When we think she’s tired or it’s time for nap/bed, we’ll ask if she wants milk. Sometimes, she insists she’s not ready and shakes her head aggressively. Other times, she heads straight to the stairs for bedtime. Once she has decided it’s bedtime, she gets very frustrated at any delay.
