Well so much for spring… today it is cold out there. I think the thermometer read 38 degrees and the wind was really whipping. I of course stubbornly did not wear my winter coat and waiting for the shuttle bus to take me to class kind of sucked.

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I took a plunge today… I took the front off her crib and converted it to a toddler bed. I could have left it as a crib, there was no real reason I needed to change it over – she wasn’t climbing out or anything. But there are a few considerations. One, we will be needing that crib for Ember at some point and I’d rather slowly transition Kate beforehand so she doesn’t feel like Ember is taking her bed. Two, it is getting hard for me to get Kate into the crib with the belly in the way and changing the sheets? Oomph. And thirdly, she loves her bed. It’s to the point that when I go in to get her in the morning, wanting to get her up, changed, fed and ready to go, she refuses to get out of the crib. She runs around happily, jumps on the mattress, talks to her stuffed animals, and hides in the back corner every time I reach for her. And she WILL cry and throw a small fit if I pull her out before she’s “ready.” I kept thinking that not only would a toddler bed be easier for me, she may actually like being able to climb in and out at will. She often asks to go to bed (or at the very least heartily agrees with my suggestion), kicking her legs in joy as I put her in her crib at night. “Pucky!” (puppy) she says in greeting, “Paci! Banket!” And then I leave and she talks and hums and plays until she falls asleep.

My first attempt at bedtime didn’t go perfectly – she was too wired (and I kind of knew that going in there but it was past 9pm already). I heard her jumping on her bed, running around and playing for 45 minutes. Then I heard thumps at the bedroom door and some whining. When it turned to confused crying I went and got her, reset her (10 minutes of down time in the living room with Elmo), then I said night night and put her back to bed. And sure enough this time, since she was actually tired, she went straight to sleep. The real trick will be seeing how she reacts at night when she wakes up. I don’t really anticipate too many issues, but I’m sure there will be some bumps with the transition as she gets used to the new arrangement.

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She can now count to ten pretty consistently – not on command though! She just does it randomly as she’s walking around the house or in the car. And she tries to count to twenty but after ten it goes something like this (this was today’s rendition): “eben, telv, nineteen, nineteen, nineteen, taaayyyy!” She also tends to count to herself pretty quietly so it can be hard to make out! Those teens are hard numbers, though. But she loves numbers and every time there’s counting numbers on Sesame Street she repeats along with them.

She is fascinated with clothes lately and tries to put them on herself. She’s getting better at it – she can now put both pants legs on. But the pants get stuck over her feet, which frustrates her, and when she stands up and tries to pull them all the way on she just can’t get it over her diaper (sposie or cloth!). So I have to help. She also doesn’t take off what she’s wearing first, so it’s pretty common around here for her to be wearing jeans overtop of leggings.

She loves shoes still, always. She can sometimes put her own shoes on, but it’s kind of hit or miss. I got her some new little sneakers (with velcro) which are great for playing outside. Problem with all shoes however: she takes them off in the truck! This is becoming a bit frustrating for me because she of course wants to walk as soon as I take her out of the truck, so she has to have shoes on. And that means before I take her out of her carseat I have to get up on the running board and lean over her carseat to fish the shoes out from the middle of the SUV seat. This is getting harder to do. It gets really old when I make 3 stops and have to do it three times. She also will attempt to take her socks off half the time and I’m at the point where if the socks are off I’m not putting them back on. Just as long as she’s wearing shoes.

Her favorite book right now is Potty. We don’t really know what it is about the book, but she loves it. You would think maybe it’s because she’s interested in potty training right? Yeah not so much. She’ll now sit on the toilet with her diaper off, but she just sits there for a few seconds and then says, “No?” and gets down. I’m not pushing it at all, just seeing how she feels about it. If she wants to sit on the potty then I’ll make the effort. But the book? She loves. She gets SO excited when I get to the “tinkle tinkle, I did it! Hooray!” She laughs and claps and then says, “‘Gain?” (again)

She’s in a big eating spurt right now… eating more than I expect her to. She ate two pieces of french toast for dinner tonight, and that was after eating constantly at the babysitter’s over lunch! “Cah-keh” (cracker) is the most frequent request I get, I try to get her to eat other things. She still loves yogurt and is almost guaranteed to eat it. Cheerios another big favorite (and popular request) – I currently have cheerios all over my floor, in fact. Cheese, which used to be a guaranteed food, is now hit or miss, though string cheese is still really easy to throw in my bag to have on me when we’re out. A lot of the fruits she used to eat she’s now shaking her head to. She loves the word banana and she loves to point out bananas excitedly, but give her one and she’ll survey it for a moment, perhaps attempt a tiny bite, before handing it back with a, “No, no.” Apples and pears she’ll eat sometimes… I have yet to figure out the rhyme or reason to it. She does seem to like little carrots with ranch dip, though. Broccoli too. I have also found that she’s approximately 10 times more likely to eat something if we are getting it from somewhere/someone else. If we’re over at someone else’s house or at a restaurant she tends to eat almost anything she is offered. At home… not so much.

Her language is still developing a lot. She is a chatterbox! Most of it is babble, which apparently she doesn’t even expect you to understand, as long as you nod and respond in some way. But when she’s clearly trying to pronounce an english word she does get very insistent if you don’t get it. She leans really close and repeats herself louder and louder. And some times I just don’t know what she means! She’s starting to put words together here and there. Today it was “Ga gun!” (all gone) when she saw my empty plate after dinner. And when I said, “Yes, all gone! Good job!” she repeated it another few times, giggling each time, complete with hands in the air in a “all gone” shrug. She’s also said “Hi doggy!” and “‘Ere go.” I’m waiting for more, because I can tell they’re bubbling right under the surface. She also likes to point out everything. She knows the names of so many things – useful, random and somewhat bizarre. She points out the dog, the bird, the pole, the stairs, the cars, and so on. Body parts are a favorite, especially “teef.”

She’s working on learning the colors, but it seems like a difficult thing for her to get. She says, “Cuhwa?” (color) a lot and when I ask her what color something is she tends to stare at the object, stare at me, then say a color name in a very questioning voice. She’s always very excited when she gets one right, but that’s still not too frequent. She tends to answer blue or green to almost everything.

I love how inquisitive she is, and how much she wants to share her discoveries with me. Even though she’s gotten quite loud lately (conversation? what conversation mom? YOU NEED TO LISTEN TO ME NOW!) I usually find her running commentary quite funny. The repeated requests for crackers, however, could go.