I realized with a start today that I’d missed the marker post about her turning 23 months old. I did post that day, but it was about her use of the word “never” (which she pronounces “nebber”) and about her first meal of true crap. I’ll flesh that out a bit more.
At 23 months, she’s using full sentences. I’m not sure when it started, because it seems she has been creative with her word use for some time now, finding alternative phrases to communicate when we don’t understand what she’s saying, being expressive to make jokes, to reminisce with us, to express her desires, to complain. I’m still surprised at her vocabulary of arbitrary things we didn’t teach her (such as “Look, mama, rockets! Just like Dumbo Ride!” when she saw the spinning Astro Orbitor ride at Disneyland today which, like Dumbo, is comprised of the passenger “car” circling in the air around a fixed center rod), and her use of conjunctions (“Allie and dada and mama in the car, going to Disneyland,” said this morning on our drive) and pluralization (“Mama has pink jacket, too, just like Allie! One, two pink jackets!”).
She loves playing pretend, such as serving us in her play kitchen. She served me “coffee” this evening, making a pouring motion from her coffee pot into a play demitasse and handing the cup to me, warning me, “Careful, mama, is hot, blow-blow,” and I said, “Mama doesn’t drink coffee. Mama drinks tea.” Allie told me, “Pretend.” So I did. I pretended to enjoy the hell out of that cup of hot air. Even when playing with us, she’ll tell me, “Mama, pretend eat Allie’s finger,” and then she’ll stick her index finger in my mouth and laugh as I make gobbling motions and sounds. Over the weekend, she placed her bottle of bath bubbles on the ground and squatted over it, saying, “Allie sit on bubbles.” I said, “That bottle’s to small. You can’t sit on that, you’ll fall.” Allie said, “Allie pretend!” and then proceeded to do exactly that. Then she picked the bottle up and put it back.
Mr. W’s noticed that when Allie gets to play with the iPad or watch videos on our smartphones, which we really try to keep to a minimum, her eyes focus inward. Today, I got her wandering right eye to come right back by putting the phone up to her face and she focused immediately on the screen and her eyes converged. Maybe we’ll have to do more close-up work with her.
Her broken front teeth still don’t seem to bother her. It’s still sad to see her having to put food to the side of her mouth to take a bite, but she doesn’t appear to have any qualms about having to readjust. Feeding her sandwiches is pretty messy, tho.
Allie definitely has an opinion about what she considers attractive. Luckily, I’m always in the “putty” category. Dada is a hit-and-miss. Ha. She prefers her pink shoes to brown shoes. She sometimes asks for pigtails, sometimes refuses them, but mama’s long hair is always “putty.”
Her biggest physical feat lately is her ability to jump. She loves it. She jumps straight up, she jumps forward, she hops in lieu of walk, she jumps off steps and sidewalks. She’s still pretty careful, thankfully, and won’t jump off of anything more than a few inches high without asking to hold our hand first. “Mama, help! Help Allie! Hold Allie’s hand!”
And lastly (that I can think of), she’s still on Team Mommy. Dada was tackling her and tickling her on Saturday, and she scrambled around, tried to get away in between giggles, and managed to get out, “Mama! Help Allie! Mama! Help Allie! No, dada, no!” I went over there to help Allie, and as I pulled Allie (gently) from his grasp, Mr. W let go of Allie and tackled me in the same way. Allie got away and ran a few steps, then stopped to look as I said, “Allie! Help mama! Allie! Help mama!” as Mr. W said, “I got mama! I got mama! Hahahaha!” Allie developed a look of concern and ran right back toward me and said, “No, dada, no! Mama! Allie help mama!” and took my hand and pulled, then placed her own body between me and Mr. W in an effort to break his hold. I was so impressed. I’ll end on that note. 🙂
