Sarah is 19 Months Old

Sarah is 19 months old now and such a fun little munchkin. The once laid-back baby who wasn't really into moving around is not either of those things anymore. Sarah loves to move around and explore. She often just walks around to walk around. When we had that nice warm day about a week ago, all Sarah wanted to do was walk around - no toys, no wagon ride, just walking and feeling the different surfaces under her feet, like the grass, the concrete, the sand, the leftover snow. As I've mentioned in the past, if she doesn't get what she wants, she's quite vocal these days. Even when walking around, if I try to change her direction, she gets really upset and starts barking at me.

Sarah still loves her music, and even has a few favorite songs. She sings/hums the ABC/Twinkle Twinkle song a lot, as well as Baby Beluga. I think she's also started humming The Wheels on the Bus and Do Re Mi from The Sound of Music. When we're in the car, her face always lights up when John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt comes up on the CD we have there. When it comes to music, she becomes totally animated and excited. I'm interested to see if this actually leads to an interest in music in the future! I don't want to sound like a tiger mom or anything, but I'd totally love that. :)

Sarah's also starting to show more interest in books and having a slightly longer attention span for listening to them. She'll often go to her bookshelf, pick out a book, mosey on over, stick her butt out at me in preparation to sit in my lap, plop down, then shake the book up and down while going "ee ee ee." After the book is over, she will get up, get another and repeat the sequence. I'm not sure what she's absorbing when we read these books to her, but she definitely has her favorites. If I pick up a book that she's not into, she'll whine and keep trying to close the book while I'm reading it.

At long last, Sarah is speaking. Not a lot, but she's definitely improving. She says "here you go" a lot when giving us things. Some random words she's been saying are: mama, dada, baby, bee (she has a bee lovey that she has recently become extremely attached to), box, book, juice, hi, and bye. She seems to be really good at the "b" words..haha. Even with animal sounds, she's always very emphatic when I ask her what sound a sheep makes - BAAAA!!! But when it comes to other sounds, she kind of only gets the vowel parts. For example she'll always respond consistently when I ask her what sound a cat makes, but instead of saying "meow", she'll go "yeow" instead. Or if I ask her what sound a goose makes, instead of "honk" she'll say "onk."

The only other thing I can think of for this month is a lot of teething. Sarah's teeth have been reeeeeally slow to come in, but in the past month it seems like all the teeth are coming out at the same time. She has swollen gums everywhere, and I see a couple of teeth starting to make their way out already. Ouch! Hopefully it'll be all over soon by the 20 month update and not too painful!

Noah is 3.5 Years Old

Noah hit the 3.5 year mark a few days ago so I figured it was time for an update.

The biggest recent news is that he is starting to drop his afternoon nap. He's napping right now actually, but for the past couple of weeks I've just let the nap go - and it has been amazing. Before, I would have to fight with him to nap, then he'd be grumpy when I woke him up, and then not tired enough to fall asleep at night. I'd have to fight with him again to get to bed at night and he usually didn't fall asleep until 10:00 or 10:30. A couple of weeks ago he seemed to be doing pretty well after lunch and too energized for a nap, so I just let him hang out in his room for a bit without napping. Then later at night, he was out by around 8:30. Amazing. Even though I let go of that little "break" during the day when his nap would have been, the extra 2 hours at night is totally worth it, plus no more fighting about sleeping (and no more grumpiness after nap). He still needs a nap every few days, like today, but otherwise this new change seems to be going well. The only hard part is getting him to take that nap every few days. Now that he's had a taste of just playing all day, he doesn't want to go back! And quite frankly, I don't either. In addition to no more sleeping issues and grumpiness, because Sarah is still napping, I also get a huge chunk of time just to spend with Noah during the day, and I think he really likes that. He starts to unravel a bit sometimes, especially in the evenings, but overall we haven't really had too many issues with meltdowns.

As Noah gets older, his personality continues to develop, and it's fun to get to know him through relationship, not just observation. He's really into movies and TV (yes, we kind of let him watch a lot) but he's always so interested in what happens between the different characters, especially the bad guys. He is always asking questions about why this person did this, why this other person did that, or just making connections with what he sees in the shows to what he sees in real life. He watched Frozen yesterday during the snow day and this morning was non-stop asking questions about the snow monster. Is he bad? Is he mean? Why does he throw people? Why does he throw the snowman? Was he trying to hurt them? Why couldn't he walk? Why was the snow man on his leg? He only is mean to people who shoot at him? And then he moved onto the wolves. Why were they chasing them? They were hungry. Did he want to bite them? Why were they hungry? Did the other animals not want to share their food? Different animals like different food. Like bears like fish? But some bears don't like fish? Etc, etc… It can be hard to answer these questions while driving on half-plowed roads, but at least he hasn't reached the stage of Why? Why? Why? after every answer. I think he was really stressed about this snow monster though because his questions kept circling around why this monster was being mean to people, and then right before nap time today he asked me if it was okay to hurt people sometimes. It's so interesting to see him forming these ideas of what's right and what's wrong, what's fair and what's not fair. He's also doing a lot of categorizing. There are a lot of questions like only boys do this? Only girls wear this? Only men do this? Only babies do this? Like he's trying to piece the world together, one question at a time. Hahaha..