Babycakes: 20 and 21 months!

Health:
Lizzie girl has been healthy for the most part, but we did not escape the winter months completely unscathed. Girlfriend had a short bout with the stomach flu when she was around 21 months; it just so happened to rear its ugly head when I was spending an afternoon in labor and delivery for some simple [fake] contraction monitoring (darn braxton hicks!) and Andy and Lizzie were coming to see me. Poor girl threw up all over her daddy (er, poor daddy?) and herself. Luckily it was a short-lived illness that included no other instances of throwing up.

Last week, though, poor girl threw up on herself during nap time at daycare. We took her in that night because she was acting so lethargic (not like herself at all, even with a fever) and had a temperature of 103. We found out there that she had an ear infection and strep on top of her stomach flu. She ended up getting the antibiotic shot because it's faster acting (12 hours and she's not contagious and, according to the doctor, likely to feel much better much faster), but that darn stomach bug hung on for two more days after that (total of three days). Poor baby :(

No more teeth to report yet! So we went from getting buckets of teeth in a  short time, to none. 

We went to a check-up for Lizzie's eyes recently (six months post-glasses). Things are looking great. Her vision is still hardly bad enough to even need correction; it was explained to me that she actually has vision the same as other kids her age who don't have glasses, but she seems to be particularly sensitive to it, so one eye will turn in as a result. Anyway, the crossing has significantly improved, so all is well. An assistant did mention putting a bifocal in because she is still crossing somewhat when looking at something up close, but Lizzie's doctor quickly turned that idea down; we'll see if things are any worse with that in six months -- if so, we'll add the bifocal. If not, we'll continue without it.

Sleep:

Still rocking girlfriend to sleep -- it's a habit I'm just not able to kick mostly. I'm horrible. Regardless, if there's a night when she's just not falling asleep with rocking, we can lay her down and she will fall asleep, given some time. While sick, we were up a few times a night -- but lately, it's usually been no wake-ups (save my third-trimester trips to the bathroom).

The last few nights, though, she's requested her crib after about 10 minutes of rocking, and then she'll fall asleep on her own... so maybe it will be something that takes care of itself? We'll see.

Diet:

Lizzie is an awesome eater, and a big eater, as of late (growth spurt?)! Favorites include: tacos, quesadillas ("dias!"), anything chicken, pizza, pasta, oranges, blueberries, blackberries, apples (under lots of supervision...), craisins, Inner Peas (from Trader Joe's and are ridiculously delicious), hummus, waffles with peanut butter, whole wheat cheddar goldfish, Annie's bunnies ("bunny cookies") and CHEESE! This girl loves her cheese. She's not a big fan of sweets, in all honesty -- ice cream? Pass! She'd rather have "fishies" (goldfish).

Generally speaking, she's still not much of a picky eater. She'll usually eat just about whatever we put in front of her, besides pears for some reason :) One of the best developments these last couple months have been her understanding of "eat two bites of ______ and you can have some more ______ (usually fruit ;))". It's awesome and typically works like a charm!

Social:

Girlfriend loves kids. Like, l o v e s! She's always asking about her cousins and talking about daycare friends. She's definitely becoming more interactive with others from what we've seen.

She's starting to be a little less shy than she had been the last few months; she doesn't hide in Andy's shoulder when we go to mass anymore, which I'm glad about. It's good to have some stranger danger, but I certainly don't want her to be petrified! As long as Mom and Dad are close by now, she's usually at least a bit comfortable.

Milestones:

So, so, so much to share in this arena. Lizzie's gross motor skills continue to improve -- she's starting to run and making attempts at jumping (and I think both feet are starting to get off the ground now!), which she loves. She'll say "jumpin'! Jumpin'! Jumpin'" or "Hop! Hop! Hop!" She's also a big fan of dancing, which typically consists of her doing a gallop-type movement in place and singing, "Dancin'! Dancin'! Dancin'!" 

Lizzie is also excellent at building towers. She loves playing Play Doh lately (er, ordering us to cut shapes using cookie cutters out of particular Play Doh colors), and sometimes the fun continues 10 minutes after we close the jars up when she stacks the jars as high as they can go without toppling over :) I think that might be one of her favorite parts of the whole tower-building thing, to be honest.

She becomes more and more interested in coloring by the day. Naturally, she's least interested in coloring with her [washable] crayons and markers and enjoys coloring with my teacher pens most.

Lizzie loves her "helper stand" that Andy made for her (and so do I)! She uses it to "help" with baking/food prep, eat snacks at the counter next to me, or just to see what I'm up to. I'm also a big fan because she can get up on it by herself and is satisfied being there, which means I don't need to lift her, which I don't do since being 20 weeks pregnant and finding I had a short cervix (those bans will be lifted soon... woohoo!). Her favorite thing to do in the helper stand is to stand in front of the sink and play with water, though :) She loves to pour and clean and play with bubbles in the sink... she usually cries pretty hard when it's time to clean up ;)

Girlfriend's talking continues to blow me away with how much and how quickly it changes. She is consistently putting together three or more words and is understanding things we say very easily. The other day, I told her to tell Daddy (Andy) to "stop freaking me out, Daddy!" and she says, "stop freaking out, Daddy!" -- pretty hilarious :) At this point, I won't even bother to list all the things she can say, because honestly, what doesn't she (at least attempt to) say?

Out to eat the other night, Lizzie pointed toward the cash register and said, "cut. Cut. Hair, hair. Cut hair." and I couldn't quite figure out what she was talking about... until Andy noticed there was a man at the register with hair past his shoulders :) So he said, "does that guy need a hair cut?" and she responded, "yeah...". Too hilarious. After the fact, she did not want to even breathe a word of this conversation and even cried when we brought it up too much, but it was way too funny.

Current loves: tractors, mowers, John Deere anything, Bison anything (says, "Go Bison!" regularly ;)), baths and bath tub paint, dollies, playing outside (she looks outside on cold days and says, "warm up, playground!" because I always tell her we can go on the playground when it warms up), covering people and stuffed animals up and telling them "nuh-night", Play Doh (woke up on a snow day home with me and upon my entering her room, says "Mommy, play Play Doh!" and ran to the table to play prior to eating breakfast), her cousins (talks about them almost daily when they aren't here), putting on lotion, brushing her teeth, dancing and singing.

Lizzie knows some of her shapes (star, heart, circle, sometimes gets triangle and square), all of her colors, and can count to 10.

She also lets me paint her nails after I've done mine :)

Lizzie is very afraid of trucks and cars, which I suppose is okay -- plus I was deathly afraid of airplanes and helicopters at this age, so I don't think it's too uncommon.

She's done an awesome job adjusting to me not being able to pick her up and carry her around. She'll climb into her car seat for me and will most often be satisfied just holding my hand at stores and in parking lots (I definitely think I have a harder time with this than she does!).

She has a hilarious sense of humor and is constantly making us laugh. This is, hands down, the most fun age so far.

We're just starting to dabble in our 18 to 24 month clothes, but we're as tight as we can go on the adjustable waistband of her Gap jeans right now :) That's okay. Better than looking like we're ready for a flood, right?