Twenty one months

It has been a while since I have done a monthly Hailey update. I know this isn't really a "milestone" month but I needed an excuse to post these pictures of her - some of my newest favorites.

Her favorite thing to do lately is test her limits. She has been driving me crazy on a daily basis. She will climb up on the couch and jump around like a monkey. When I tell her not to jump, just sit on the couch - she will plop down and give you a big grin like the one in the photo to the left and wave at you and say "Hi" and then get right back up and start jumping. I have tried to take her off the couch but she climbs back up. I have tried to put her in time-out but she just doesn't really get the concept. I have tried yelling at her but she just thinks that is funny. I am out of ideas. We have battles everyday at mealtime because she wants to stand up in her highchair. She will just stand there and shovel food into her mouth. We thought we had remedied the situation by finding the chair straps and strapping her in the chair. If she is "contained", she will furiously try to Houdini out of her straps and when she can't she starts to throw whatever is on her tray all over the floor. The ants LOVE her! Another fun high chair trick she has learned is to try to climb the highchair when she is hungry. My warnings and worst fear were realized last week under Daddy's charge when she attempted to climb up and pulled it over on herself. I just realized a moment ago that you can see her battle scar above her right tooth in the top photo. You would think she would have learned her lesson, but she is even more determined.

For my kids, twenty one months seems to be the time that napping starts to be an issue. I don't know what to do about her naps. If she sleeps in the morning she will not sleep in the afternoon but she still seems tired in the morning. If she doesn't take an afternoon nap, she is completely psycho from late afternoon until bedtime. Recently I was looking through the journal that I kept for Evan and found basically the above statement word for word about him. So I know that it should get better, at least it did with him. I just wish I would have written down when and how it got better. I think she is most likely going to have to live without a morning nap and adjust her body clock. I will miss the two naps - nap time is my only bit of peace during the day.

She has become a book lover! She will sit and listen to books until your eyes can't focus on another word. Some of her favorites are books about animals, anything she can lift the flap of, Peekaboo Kitty, No More Monkeys Jumping on the Bed (with this one she LOVES to do the finger shaking, pointing doctor part) and her soft books (Goodnight Farm and Good Puppy). She also enjoys looking at her God Bless photo album with pictures of the family in it. She reminds me a lot of Evan with her book fascination. Evan has been a book kid from day one. Spencer always liked to be read to at bedtime, but never during the day. Oddly, I think there may be some sort of correlation between books and vocabulary since her speech is starting to develop a little more and faster. (I am totally kidding! I know it most likely has EVERYTHING to do with her having more exposure to books. Books are very important in our house.) Words she has totally mastered are: dada, mama, baba (sippy) ball, car, oh-oh, bye, hi, deer and Mirabel. (How random is it that she knows deer? And that she can't say her brother's names to save her life but she can say her cousin Mirabels! And today she saw a picture of Aunt Dana and pointed right at it and said "DayDay" - which is what the boys call her.) She says lots of other words that are not really clear to anyone but me but she is consistant in their use, for example: please, thank you, juice, pretty (which refers to anything in anyone's hair), nose, eyes and there are more but I am drawing a blank. I am sure that she is still a "delayed" in the speech area, but I am not too concerned at this point. Evan was considered to be a slow talker and he is right where he should be now.

She is starting to point to her various body parts. Her favorites are nose, feet and belly button. She knows the sounds that many animals make. Her favorites are dogs and cats. She barks and meows whenever one is anywhere in a two mile radius of her. She knows the sound an elephant makes and raises her arm like a trunk. She crinkles her nose and purses her lips to make a sound like a rabbit. Bird sounds including owls and ducks are another big favorite. Oh, and dinosaurs - she has their ROAR totally down pat.

She loves to give "high fives" and Daddy taught her "the rock" and she loves that as well. For Daddy's birthday I taught her the Daddy hand rub. Now if we ask "What does Daddy do?" she will rub hands together and grin like a maniac. I tried to teach her the "thumbs up", but I just laugh when she does it because she does it exactly like Evan with her two pointer fingers up instead of thumbs. Evan still gives the thumbs up that way.

I am amazed at her ability to comprehend complex commands. I will tell her to do something and think that I am just talking to hear myself speak or buy some time and she will do it. The other day she came to me carrying her shoes and I told her that she wasn't going to wear those shoes she needed to go and get her brown shoes. She walked away and a few minutes later came back with the brown shoes. I have serious doubts that her older brothers would be able to do that! Heaven knows, they can't find ANYTHING!

She is big on kisses and hugs lately. It is the sweetest thing. She wants to kiss everyone before she goes up to sleep. She even kisses the pictures in the frames on the way to her room.

She has even learned how to use her sweet little pucker as a stalling technique. When we put her in her crib she will stand back up and hold out her arms and pucker at us wanting one more kiss. How can we resist that?

I am starting to notice similarities with her brother's in her emerging personality. The latest is when we put her down to sleep she will scream and cry for a couple of minutes and then finally lay down. Spencer used to do the same thing. She is starting to show a little bit of a temper very reminiscent of Evan. I already mentioned the book thing which is all Evan. She doesn't "play" by herself very well - a Spencer trait. Unlike either of the boys, she has no interest in TV. Which I guess is a good thing, but sometimes it would be nice to turn on the "sitter" for a half hour without a little girl following me around.

We joke that you are a bottomless pit. Your brother's say that you want to eat whatever anyone else is eating - they are right for the most part. You still eat things that I would never in my wildest dreams think of feeding to you. Spicy enchilada casserole - you devour it. You have yet to meet a fruit or vegetable that you don't like. Bananas and grapes are slurped up as fast as I can cut them into pieces. A new thing this past week is that you will take a whole apple and bite into it and continue to eat the whole thing down to the core. You just seem too little to be doing that, but you love it. You also think it is cool to take a few bites and then go get another apple -so we have had some issues with that.

You are definitely your own little person Hailey Marie, and we are learning who that is little by little. These days you are learning new things on a daily basis. It is so rewarding for us to see your triumphs and celebrate each new discovery. I am so excited for these next few months. I can't wait to see how you experience the upcoming holidays - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. I look forward to seeing the wonderment through your eyes.

I love you my sweet (and sometimes naughty) little Wee!

Photo note: The elephant in the pictures with her is one of her favorite toys. It's name is Frankie and it used to dance and sing sort of a "Frankie rap type song". She got it for Christmas last year and it worked fine and then when we changed the batteries, it shorted out or something. Now when we turn it on it moves for a second then won't do anything else. She doesn't understand why it doesn't do the dancing and singing anymore so it kind of bums her out that I won't make it work for her. I tried to contact the company to try to get a new one but I can't get through on the email. She still loves Frankie even though she is defective.