22 Months

In no time, I start counting by the year instead of months. I'm still in disbelief that my sweet little girl will be two! The time is particularly flying by since it's just the three of us with Eli gone. I haven't had much time to blog, but have put together several posts in my head--this is one of them. So here goes.

The big shocker this month: Elsie can open doors. Doors with knobs. That push or pull.

This truly is the end of the world as we know it. Nothing is safe anymore. She likes to play in the sink in the downstairs bathroom, getting water everywhere. I had to go to extreme measures to keep her out: lock the door from the inside.

I'm not so lucky when it comes to the pantry, becaues the pantry doesn't have a lock. She came wandering over to me the other day with fruit snacks in her hands. Where did she find those? That's when I realized her new skills.

This month she also started using understandable sentences. She was mad at me because I wouldn't let her have Oscar's pacifier one day when she wasn't feeling well. The babysitter had given her her "emergency" paci before we left and I let her bring it home, so I said, "Where is your pacifier? Is it by your bed?" She left the room and came back a few minutes later proclaiming, "I foun it! I foun it!" It took me a minute to figure out what she was yelling. So I asked, "Did you find it?" She turned the corner to where I could see her, thrust the pacifier at me and triumphantly said, "Yes!" She also uses the phrase "I dop it" when she's dropped something, anything. And I feel like at Kroger today, that cashier said thank you and Elsie turned to him and said something that sounded like "Have a nice day." !?!

She loves to color. Though when she says it is sounds like "car" or "kerr". No els to be found. Pens, pencils, crayons. She doesn't care. She also likes to write on herself.

She has said "thank you" for a long time, but this month just started tacking "mommy" onto it when I give her something. "Thank you, Mommy!"

She also has gotten pretty proficient with the spoon. Now, most mornings as she eats her oatmeal, she comes up clean--no globs in her lab or drops on her shirt. I'm impressed.

And finally, she has started to confidently climb the stairs. We haven't had a gate at the bottom of the stairs for a while because she doesn't play on the stairs. We're probably going to have to put that gate back because she's become more and more bold, and with that she is much quicker. There's no running upstairs for something without Elsie following me.

I feel like there's so much more. She's growing so fast!

Cheers.