21 Month Update

Little Sarah is growing up! She'll be two soon, and every day she is becoming more and more independent. It's so strange how she used to be so content to sit with me or in the stroller, or be carried in the Ergo, but now she is always wanting to walk around by herself. She's starting to pick up more words, which is a big relief to me. She's still having a hard time saying full words, for example she'll say "o" instead of "no," but it's clear that she mean's "no," but she's using the same words for the same things consistently, so I'm pretty happy with that. She likes to say "down" a lot ("dow"), so that she can walk ("wah"). Actually a lot of times that's how I get her to put her shoes on. She loves taking off her shoes in the car and sometimes gets really upset when I try to put them back on (which is odd since one of her favorite things to do at home is put shoes on), so I'll tell her she needs her shoes to walk, and immediately she relents. Then insists on walking. Other things she's saying these days are water ("wawie"), smoothie ("ooie"), rice ("rie"), milk ("muh"), yep ("up"), uh uh, uh oh, and she uses "babbuh" for a lot of things: bubble, apple, pineapple, grapes.. Basically anything that sounds like bubble or looks like a bubble. Also exciting is that she's starting to say "here go mama" when she wants to give me something. She's been saying "here go" for a while, but just recently started directing that at people.

Because she's been slow to talk, and is the baby, I feel like she's become quite a bit of a whiner. A lot of times the whining is somewhat justified, because Noah has just taken something from her and she has no other way of expressing unhappiness, but it seems that she's recognized that this is a very effective form of communication so is really starting to over do it! I am definitely struggling to figure out how to get her out of the habit though. On a side note, I really don't know how I'm going to handle a third baby. It's not the taking care of three at a time that worries me (though it probably should), but it's going through all of this for a THIRD time. Even a second time is already so tiresome, and I wasn't even really around to get Noah through this stage since he was at daycare most of the day. I think about where Noah is in terms of talking, learning, potty training, reasoning, etc. and I just get so overwhelmed thinking about getting Sarah to that point. I feel on a daily basis like I'm failing with Noah all the time and often get so frustrated with having to tell him for the thousandth time to sit on his bottom, to eat his food, to share his toys, etc., but when I look at Sarah I'm just like wow, you have such a long way to go. Haha! And Sarah isn't even going to be in preschool until she turns three!! Noah has at least been in some form of school since he was one and has had so much exposure to other people, routines, and general academic things. Sarah's life is just one of getting dragged around to Noah's things and my daily errands. Well, at least she usually does it with a smile. :)