So today is Madame's seventeenth month birthday, and I'm officially going to stop counting the freaking months next month. "She's a year and a half" is perfectly acceptable from here on out I think.
As I didn't do one of these posts last month, I'm rolling it all up into one - and in these two months a lot has happened.
- Talking. She's not really speaking yet, but her arsenal of words (or word-like sounds) is growing all the time. Before I had a kid I thought that little kids just started saying words one day, but I'm starting to realize it's much more of a gradual continuum. She can repeat sounds you make, and sometimes she can put certain sounds with certain meanings consistently, but she isn't speaking any perfectly formed words yet. Her baby talk is really developed though, and her inflection and facial expressions really convey that she's saying something, just in a language I can't understand. If I could do this part over with her, I probably would have done some of that baby sign language with her.
- Eating. I, as pretty much anyone who knows me knows, hate cheese. I'll eat pizza and some mozzarella, but other than that it kind of sickens me. My Madame however loves cheese. We're trying to incorporate other food in her diet, but I swear that girl could live on grilled cheese sandwiches, peaches and pretzel rods until she's 18.
- Testing. Even at 17 months, I'm starting to see those terrible twos start to creep in. She constantly tests us, seeing what she can get away with and seeing what the consequences will be. Tell her "no" and she'll try it again. Tell her a second time and she'll either stop doing it, take whatever she was doing somewhere else out of my sight and try it again, or smile at me and then do it again. Getting angry or yelling really doesn't have any effect, so I'm trying to develop an icy stare that will stop her dead in her tracks. But I've been unsuccessful so far.
- Kisses. This one is the best. After months, she's finally started to give kisses. I don't really know why this one was so important to me, but after changing the fourth dirty diaper in as many hours, getting a kiss on the cheek is a nice reward - even if I have to prompt her.