Twenty-Nine Months Old

Miss Pearl is another month older! Another season has drawn to a close, and I have wistfully packed away another batch of outgrown clothes. When did she get so big?



She is so smart and funny and sweet. She is counting for real now - not always 100% correctly, but we can tell she's associating the numbers with the actual amount of things. She'll empty the contents of the coffee table drawer and say, "Four brushes, and one card!"



Her pronoun usage is improving in that she now usually replies with "I" when addressed as "you" rather than just responding to the pronoun in kind. It's amazing, how she just picks it all up. It's a complex thing to learn though and she's still working on it - one day she crawled into the space between my legs where I was standing and said, "Mama is a house!" As I was somewhat surprised at being proclaimed thus, I didn't play along but said, "No I'm not!" to which Pearl replied, matter-of-factly, "Yes, she is."

She says all manner of amusing thing... a favorite of mine this month has been hearing her say, "My face is grumpy!" after meals (having heard me tell her that her face is grubby many a time!).

And when sitting at a stoplight I pointed out a fire engine across the way, she regarded it a moment before solemnly declaring, "It's beautiful!" And it was, really, all bright and sparkling in the clear October sunshine. She loves seeing trains and bulldozers and airplanes and fire engines and especially buses.



One afternoon our little family of three was at the park and Pearl was walking between her daddy and I, holding our hands and was saying that she was holding mama's hand and daddy's hand and I told her that we were all holding hands together. Then she brought her hands together so that ours were together, too! It was a sweet moment.

It's been a rough month in that it's been just one affliction after another... new top molar, a cold, a relapse, more teething, high fevers... We're all pretty worn out and out of sorts.



Even with all that unpleasantness, pottying is still going extremely well! She's progressed to saying that she needs to go, she's even doing well at pulling her pants up and down, which for some reason seems to me like a very cute, grown-up sort of thing for her to be doing!

She is certainly getting big.

Projects Completed: Kimono & Corduroys

I finished this outfit and photographed it a few weeks ago:



Though I am love Asian-inspired things and the floral fabric print (which is appropriately from Japan), I'm not crazy about this top. Maybe it's a tad too big for Pearl, or maybe the fabric is just too stiff... I just don't love it.



And the pants.... oh, those pants! I got them done, seams finished, hemmed perfectly... and I was trimming the seams down with my rotary cutter I got a bit cocky and careless and sliced right through the pants leg. I literally cried, as I didn't have enough corduroy left to make another, and, being somewhat poor, can't just rush out and buy more. So I had to undo the him, the inner leg seam, patch the slices and add side pockets to cover the damage, reseam, rehem, etc. They're done now though, so, hooray.

Twenty-Eight Months Old

This is Pearl, twenty-eight months old:



Pearl is not at a stage where she enjoys really helping me bake, and vice versa. She loves standing on the step stool and scooping and dumping ingredients, stirring them together, and talking with me about what's going on. She even likes to help with the clean up!



For the past few weeks she has being using the potty at a rate as high as 100% some days! She doesn't usually ask to go, however - but when I set her on the potty she goes! It's all just working suddenly. I am enjoying the relative freedom from diapers and hoping it lasts.

With me taking belly dancing classes she has been getting more solo time with her Daddy and that has been fun for both of them. She has also picked up some of my moves after watching me practice and it is perhaps the cutest thing ever.



She is getting better about verbalizing her wants and needs, which is good. When she is hungry, she says, "What would you like best to eat?" (a spin on a line from a poem) and takes off for the fridge. It is nice not having to guess so much.

This month she started refusing to ride in shopping carts at stores - oh, the horror! All is well until I have her feet almost throw the holes and she bucks about and starts fussing. Thankfully, a quick talk about how she can only walk in the store if it's a quick trip or if Daddy is there to help, and so please sit in the cart, works. I did not expect it to... but she is more reasonable these days than I give her credit for I guess. These shifts away from babyhood throw me sometimes.



She is a very social creature lately. She loves when children we meet at the playground will play with her. It is sweet to see her become excited at mention of plans made with friends and families, and the affection she shows them when together.

Her appetite has exploded this months and I have been astonished at how much she can put away at one sitting!



We have been so busy these past few months that I haven't been getting these monthly updates done quite on time, but I am making sure that I do. I want to at least have record of what little I manage to remember by the end of the month... it's sad, how quickly memory fades.