20 Months!!

Time for an update…Katie turned 20 months last week and nothing like a toddler to be singing and dancing impromptu throughout your day and night, the same exact song and dance…haha…we’re loving it!!

Physically, Katie may have grown a tad bit in the last month but nothing drastic that we can tell. But we have noticed her brain sucking up all that we have to offer intentionally and unintentionally. We have found ourselves on a few occasions amazed that she’s simply not a baby anymore and the biggest evidence is her vocabulary. She has plenty of it and knows how to use it…scary! She knows how to say ‘Sprout’ for her favorite cable network, ‘dance’ to make Mommy and Daddy get their workouts for the day, ‘ketchup’ as an all purpose dipping sauce, ‘Starbucks’ so Daddy knows where to stop for his coffee, ‘juice juice’ for a sip at Jamba Juice, and ‘ice cream’ as her favorite dessert…please don’t say ice cream when you’re around her. These are no where near all the words she knows. She’s especially fast to pick up words for things she loves. Suppose, this girl knows what she wants a majority of the time!

She’s also a big fan of YouTube videos. Hubby created a playlist of kids’ videos and it is helping her be interactive in her singing and dancing. Like us adults, she has a song and dance stuck in her head. You can see her show it off to her Grandpa and teaches him to follow the moves to it too on my Facebook ;o)

Since the weather is getting nicer, we’re able to hit the parks almost daily. It is a great way to wear Katie out (not so easy these days) for a nice long nap or a sleep-through-the-night treat. Her naps have been consistent at one a day for 1-2 hours and if she wakes up early in the morning, she’ll take a late morning nap and a late afternoon nap. As for overnight sleep, she’s at 50/50. Half the week, she’ll wake up at 3-4am screaming for some warm milk, probably evidence that she didn’t get much of a dinner meal. And the other half of the week, she’ll sleep like an angel for 10+hrs straight. One night last week, we were woken by crunching noises and found our toddler to be sitting at the end of our bed munching on toddler snacks that was suppose to be in my purse. She had a glow on her from the night light in the hallway which made her seem like a dream at first. Obviously, she quickly snapped us out of it and back to the reality of putting her back to sleep. Unfortunately, the sugar from the snacks kept her awake for the next hour and half. By the time she was knocked out, we had ten minutes before we had to get ready for work…urrgghh… Thank goodness these nights are getting few and far between but they never get easier. A cup of black coffee the next morning is a definite must!

Outdoor play times are also great opportunities for her to harass strangers and dive into social networking like a natural. We can already tell this little girl is going to love pre-school. She’s observant of other kids and is not shy to participate in activities with them. She actually prefers being around kids particular girls a little older and takes pride in her independence to make friends. At a party recently, she followed a girl a few years older into a play room and as soon as she saw her daddy walk in behind her, Katie showed her daddy the door hinting him to leave her and her friend…haha… Gosh, we should really get uses to this huh?

She’s four months shy of her 2nd birthday and look at what we’ve had to deal with already. This parenting thing is quite dynamic and a science to get a hang of, if we ever do. Katie definitely keeps us on our toes and our lives are as interesting as the phrases she throws at us. Have a great week!