Twenty-One Months Old

Each month when I write these little reviews I try to think of what has defined the month; a thing or two that really sets one month apart from the one before it. I didn't have to try very hard this month: this has been the Month of No.

Pearl has been saying no for a while now, but this month rather than the sweet, matter-of-fact little "no" she would utter before, this month she has been yelling the word, sometimes flailing arms and stomping feet and shaking her head to really emphasize that she means NO! and often repeating it, a string of no's one after the other after the other.

It is sometimes amusing, sometimes frustrating, especially when she is refusing something necessary (getting dressed, putting a diaper on, etc, etc).



Her language acquisition continues on in other ways as well. She is using names more... rather than just using them as identifiers, she will say, "Mama, sing a song!" or, "Nest Eye fell down!" or, "Mama! Nee hep!" (need help!) One phrase I hear a lot is "Stuck! Nee some hep!" She has started missing her father and I when we leave, and will say, "Go find Daddy!" She talks about things she remembers, too - kicking the snow, seeing a cat jump over the fence. It is neat to see her putting little sentences together, picking and choosing words to get her point across. She still jabbers a lot of stuff that I cannot understand at all though!



She makes up her own little songs and sings about the cats, about her little alligator toy. "The Wheels on the Bus" and "Bye-Lo Baby" are her new favorite songs this month. "The Wheels on the Bus" really cracks her up and it amuses me to no end to hear her say, "Move on back!" and watch her do her approximations of the hand motions. Once while we were singing it she sneezed and so I added the verse of "Pearl on the bus goes ah choo, ah choo, ah choo!" and she has since added it to her rendition and I will hear her singing it every now and then as she goes about her little toddler business. Sometimes when I am sitting at the computer listening to my music, she will come up and insist we listen to Dan Zanes! Or Caboose Song!

Pearl seems so bright; I love teaching her and seeing her learn. She knows some shapes - moon (crescent), star, circle, square... and most of the colors... blue and red still throw her a bit. She is mastering feeding herself with a spoon and is trying to put on her own shoes and socks. (She is quite adept at taking them off and the other day she took her shirt off by herself for the very first time!)



Sleep has been pretty rough lately. For the first half of this month it was hard to get her down for the night but she slept okay after that (once I got in bed to stay, anyway), and the next half she went to bed early and easily but also woke up at an ungodly hour. I blame teething. She got two new teeth this month, or so I thought. One has since disappeared so it either receded, or I am crazy and imagined a new tooth to give some meaning to the night-time chaos.



Pearl ended this challenging twenty-first month with a bang: while we were outside this morning, she ate some little green pellets that were in some soil leftover from repotting a houseplant. I managed to fish one out of her mouth and then got to call the Poison Control Hotline for the very first time. (May it be the last!) I was told that it was probably fertilizer and wasn't enough to be toxic, and just to watch her for a while for an upset stomach and mouth irritation, not to let her sleep on her back, etc. I figured she would be all right but I wasn't sure what those pellets were and safe is definitely better than sorry.

I know I said that Pearl's obsession with saying no is what stands out about this month, but that isn't what pops up in my mind when I think about who she is right now. The image of her in my mind right now is of the little girl who sees the moon and stars in the light reflected from the lamp onto the ceiling, who tells me that donkeys say "honkey", who waves back to vines and leaves blowing in the breeze; the girl who is the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world.