Michaela has been diligently practicing jumping and she finally successfully jumped off 2 feet in mid-March while we were in Miami for baseball. At first she cleared the ground by just a few millimeters, but within a few weeks she was jumping several inches off the ground over everything. She jumps everywhere now, which sometimes makes us nervous. She jumps down the stairs, over roots and rocks, she even jumps over lines on the ground. She is also really into climbing and now climbs onto the couch and chairs by herself and tackles the monkey bars at the playground with us close by.
Michaela continues to become more sophisticated with her talking, especially with her word selection and the complexity of her sentences. We are practicing phonics (letter sounds) so she can learn to read when she is ready. She is also counting to 20. She still doesn’t recognize colors…I’m convinced she’s color-blind but I'm sure that I am just being over-anxious.
It’s neat how toddlers really start to display distinct personalities. Michaela is very loving. She likes to snuggle and tells us that she loves us. This also manifests in separation anxiety when we leave her. She often has a brief breakdown when we leave for work and when we put her to bed. She gets over it in a few minutes but it always breaks my heart to walk out the door with my daughter sobbing on the floor after I’ve had to detach her from my leg. It should be interesting when the new baby comes along in June.
January-March (19-21 months)
Michaela is growing into a kid so fast these days! It’s hard to document her milestones because she’s doing cute things every day so I am going to start using more of a journal/stream of consciousness approach. So the first bit of news for this new time period is that Michaela is going to be a big sister! We are expecting a baby boy in mid-June. We started talking to her more about it in early March because I was definitely showing and Katie and Sasha (our nanny) were about to have babies so there was a lot of baby talk in the air.
The past 3 months have been a nice relief for me because I had morning sickness nausea and extreme fatigue from October until late January and then I finally started feeling better in February. As the weather warmed up in March we spent lots of time outdoors. We walked to one of the many playgrounds in the neighborhood daily. Michaela’s new favorite place is the “bumpy trail.” This is a short trail that leads to a playground in the woods. On the trail, we point out roots, moss, rocks, bugs…she has become quite the naturalist. Her favorite activity is throwing rocks in the little sinkhole of water along the trail. Grammy started this when they would go on trail walks at her house. They say “kerplunk” each time the rock hits the water. Her goal is to find the biggest rock possible to make a big splash. So sometimes when we’re walking elsewhere we’ll look for rocks to put in our pocket and save for “kerplunking.”
Michaela has continued her verbal explosion. She now uses original sentences (i.e., not memorized) that are up to 5-6 words long. She likes to describe everything she sees. This is very neat for us because previously we would initiate the conversations but now she is always pointing out things, asking questions, and engaging us in conversation. She continues to be shy around new people at first but opens up after a while and is quite friendly. She has mastered her alphabet and counts up to 12 (still oddly skipping 7). She says all her colors but only seems to recognize a couple.
We tried potty training at 19 months because she was able to communicate so well, but she wasn’t quite ready and had a lot of accidents because she couldn’t tell when she had to go. It was a pretty humorous weekend. We let her run around bare bottom and would have her sit on the potty every 30 minutes which she did patiently with no success. In variably she would have an accident within 10 minutes of getting off the potty.
We finally broke down and let Michaela watch some tv on the Noggin channel and she really enjoys a show called the Wonder Pets which is on right before bed time. Oddly, she has learned a lot of things from this show and is always spouting lines or plots from the show. For example, we were walking around the Asiatic section of the Duke Gardens and she pointed out the bamboo trees and talked about how the panda bear got stuck in the bamboo tree (which is one of her favorite episodes).
The past 3 months have been a nice relief for me because I had morning sickness nausea and extreme fatigue from October until late January and then I finally started feeling better in February. As the weather warmed up in March we spent lots of time outdoors. We walked to one of the many playgrounds in the neighborhood daily. Michaela’s new favorite place is the “bumpy trail.” This is a short trail that leads to a playground in the woods. On the trail, we point out roots, moss, rocks, bugs…she has become quite the naturalist. Her favorite activity is throwing rocks in the little sinkhole of water along the trail. Grammy started this when they would go on trail walks at her house. They say “kerplunk” each time the rock hits the water. Her goal is to find the biggest rock possible to make a big splash. So sometimes when we’re walking elsewhere we’ll look for rocks to put in our pocket and save for “kerplunking.”
Michaela has continued her verbal explosion. She now uses original sentences (i.e., not memorized) that are up to 5-6 words long. She likes to describe everything she sees. This is very neat for us because previously we would initiate the conversations but now she is always pointing out things, asking questions, and engaging us in conversation. She continues to be shy around new people at first but opens up after a while and is quite friendly. She has mastered her alphabet and counts up to 12 (still oddly skipping 7). She says all her colors but only seems to recognize a couple.
We tried potty training at 19 months because she was able to communicate so well, but she wasn’t quite ready and had a lot of accidents because she couldn’t tell when she had to go. It was a pretty humorous weekend. We let her run around bare bottom and would have her sit on the potty every 30 minutes which she did patiently with no success. In variably she would have an accident within 10 minutes of getting off the potty.
We finally broke down and let Michaela watch some tv on the Noggin channel and she really enjoys a show called the Wonder Pets which is on right before bed time. Oddly, she has learned a lot of things from this show and is always spouting lines or plots from the show. For example, we were walking around the Asiatic section of the Duke Gardens and she pointed out the bamboo trees and talked about how the panda bear got stuck in the bamboo tree (which is one of her favorite episodes).
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