Seventeen Months Old

Oh, what a month this seventeenth month has been. The first half of it was good and fun - we got plenty of sleep, Pearl was cheerful and cute as could be. The second half was pretty much exhausting, filled with new teeth and snot and whinyness, and lacking considerably in sleep.



Her eight and ninth teeth are the ones that came through after some rough nights; her bottom first molars. And we had a few days of restful sleep before she caught a cold and then the next two weeks were rough again. When she was sick she started refusing to go to Daddy to be rocked, perhaps not wanting to be so far from milkies, or maybe just not wanting to go to sleep. Either way, the bedtime routine we'd perfected and executed smoothly for months was no long effective and that was no fun all around.

She has recovered fully physically from the bug she caught but she is still very fussy and clingy! She also has picked back up on throwing little fits, crumpling to the floor and turning her bones to jelly and all that.

I cut her hair for the first time this month, just a little trim of the shortest layer in back where it was becoming tangled and rough. It's not even really noticeable, which is good because I didn't do a very good job! Her hair is getting so long, touching her shoulders, curling a little - more so on humid days. In front it hangs over her eyes. Where she used to fight at having a barrette put in her hair, she now loves for me to do it - so she can pull it out and have me put it back in again, and again and again.



Pearl has come up with her own little jokey game - when she is nursing, she will suddenly unlatch then try to latch on to my arm, then pop up and grin and shake her head as I say, "That's not milkies!" It's very cute.

Her quest for language continues on - pointing at things and hearing me name them (often over and over - "ring, finger, hand" is a favorite pattern) is something she loves to do. She started saying her name this month! Like most of her words it's not a very precise pronunciation but it is unmistakable that she's saying her name as she points at pictures of herself and her reflection in the mirror. She has been saying "Mama" a lot recently as well. Other words she's picked up include:

Music
Pictures (we do those two things a lot on the computer!)
Books
Duck
Quack ("kak kak kak!")
Eyes
Apple ("opple!")
Frog
I see
It's good!
Hug
Birds
Belly
Glasses
Cup
Phone
Puffs
Owl (often pronounced "howl")
Owlbies (for Owl Babies)



I do not think I have mentioned the current owl obsession in the Fuzzy Peach Household. "Hoo hoo" was one of the first animal sounds Pearl started doing, and soon afterward she was pointing out owls everywhere we went! I had no idea the world was so full of owls. They're all over the place: making cameos in half of the books we read, we have two owl toys and two owl-specific books, and Pearl and I each have an owl shirt. I love hearing her say, "Owl, hoo, hoo!" so much that I have a hard time resisting anything owl-themed.

She found her belly button this month, and I find it just too cute to see her lift her shirt up, peer down, and poke at it, saying, "Belly!" Appropriately, we have been reading a lot of Sandra Boynton's Belly Button Book.



This month was punctuated by a few moments of transcendence for me: still moments when all the stress and worries and activity of the past and the future fell away and I could see myself, and I could see Pearl, and I could see the beauty of the life we have created with my husband, sense with clarity the value of the loving home we have and our relationships with each other. I am hoping for more of these moments of mindfulness as they leave me with a sense of peace and strength, and, of course, love: