at sixteen months.

Oh, remember how I was going to meticulously document everything about my baby? All those weekly pictures next to her teddy bear, all the milestones, all her personality quirks? So maybe I'm sixteen months late to THAT game, but, hey, good intentions, yadda yadda.

Rowan turns sixteen months old on Sunday, and J.J. and I realized last night that it's high time we start calling her "almost one and a half" instead of "sixteen months." I GET IT, though. When they're this young, there is a huge difference between certain months! In fact, when she was a newborn, I was tempted to refer to her in half-weeks ("two and a half weeks"), because the newborn time warp made me think that Random Granny on the Street would judge her for being too small/too big/too hairy/too sleepy/too hungry for a three-week-old...but if she's only two and a HALF weeks? Oh. WELL, then. Understood.

...Right. Anyway. I'd like to take a minute (...just sit right there...) to write down what makes Rowan Rowan right now, at sixteen months. (Or fifteen and four-fifths months.) 


The things I don't want to forget about her:

:: Her language development. Seriously, I don't know if it's my early childhood background or just a normal parent thing, but I am obsessed with watching her language develop. She just had her first "language explosion," and out of it came so much cuteness: cheering for herself ("Yayyy, Ro-Ro!"), the way she responds in the affirmative with a drawn-out "Yeahhh," and spontaneously thanking us at appropriate times. I tried to get some "TANK you, maMA!" on video:

:: I make her go backwards down our stairs since they're hardwood. She gets so excited about doing this that she executes her turnaround allll the way at the other end of the hallway, slithers backwards down the hall on her belly to the staircase, and then starts her descent.

:: She's obsessed with this stuffed elf we had out at Christmastime - so much so that we couldn't pack him away with the rest of the decorations. Inexplicably, she named him "Hi," and she uses a different voice for him - her high-pitched "pretend" voice. She makes Hi build with blocks, color with crayons, and play with the finger-paint-Ziploc-bags on the window. Most of all, Hi loves to knock down people's block towers. Gramma theorizes that he represents Rowan's naughty side.

:: Anytime she find a bucket with a handle, she packs it with treasures, picks it up, and waves bye-bye to us.

:: When she does something mildly naughty or mischievous, I always shake my head and say, "Girrrl!" The other day, I heard her in the back seat of the car saying, "Girrrl!" Sure enough, I turned around and saw her taking off her shoes and socks (which I try to discourage in the car). Now every time she takes her socks off, she says, "Girrrl!" - and she says it to one of her books that has a picture of a girl taking her socks off. This video isn't her best "Girrrl," but you get the gist:

:: As soon as our car enters Gramma's neighborhood, she starts yelling, "Gra! Gra!" (And then she meows and says "Baby!", because Gramma has a kitty-cat and some baby dolls at her house.)

:: She continues to loooove baby dolls, especially pretending to put them to sleep. She wants you to do the whole routine that we do with her at night-night time: ziiiiip up the sleep sack, give Baby a paci and Bunny, and pick Baby up to rock her and sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."

:: Anytime she sees something and decides she likes it, she wants to give it a hug ("Ug"). All the trees on our walks, all the bouncing balls at the museum, all the hats on strangers' heads. We ug what we can, and we are sad for the things we cannot ug.

:: She's still loving the song "Home," and she sings along to parts of it. She also sings - and dances - along to "Can't Hold Us" by Macklemore and "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift.

:: Every evening between dinner and bath time, she has her cuckoo time, where she runs around screeching, spinning in circles ("Dizzy! Dizzy!"), and flopping herself down on pillows. I think she's getting out that last burst of energy before bed, and it's hilarious to watch:

:: When she's in a shopping cart, she loves waving to everyone who passes and saying "HI" really loudly, which usually surprises the other shoppers.

:: She does some spot-on sound effects, but my favorites are her meow and the way she says wah wah wah to represent somebody crying.

:: A true Ann Arbor native, she points out the letter M everywhere we go. For now, all letters are Ms to her, but I still think it's cool that she can discern letters from other markings. Humans are crazy awesome, right?

:: Whenever she sees her little red sled hanging in the garage, she starts talking all about when we went sledding at Gramma's house ("Weeeee!") and had pizza afterwards.

:: I'd love to find some mama-baby yoga classes or YouTube videos and do them with Rowan - she loves trying poses out, especially Cobra (which she also makes Baby and Hi perform) and Downward Dog. Similarly, if she's laying down and you say, "Ready...PIKE!" she'll throw her legs up into a pretty perfect pike (diving) position - legs straight, toes pointed and resting on her forehead.

:: She's had both baby signs and spoken words for months now, but just this past week, she started doing a funny, incoherent babble, and sometimes she whisper-babbles...which comes out sounding just like the Black Smoke Monster from the TV show Lost. I keep trying to get it on video, but (apropros to the creepy factor) you can never really hear it on video.

:: You can hear her "I'm being mischievous" cackle on video, though:

Of course, there are a few things I'm not super fond of, sooo...here are the things I wouldn't mind forgetting about her (but that still make her her):

:: Nap struggles. If she does two naps, I'm the only one who can get her to sleep for them, and it involves a literal song-and-dance routine. If she does one nap, she goes down easily, but she wakes up too early (as evidenced by her extreme crankiness for the rest of the day).

:: Her perfectionist streak. If I only knew where it came from (ahem). Poor girl will spread out a blanket seven times, just trying to get it ready so she can lay her baby down on it, and then dissolve into tears because it's not perfectly straight. Gahhh.

:: Her toddler attitude. It just reared its ugly head in the last week, and manifests in temper tantrums, whininess, clinginess, and general grouchiness. She's so unlike her usual easygoing self that I'm chalking it up to either a growth spurt or her mild cold, since the thought of this being her personality from here on through the terrible twos and the motherf***ing threes is too much to bear.  It's bad enough that I found myself in the shower this morning composing a (not-real) email my pediatrician to ask if this level of sudden-onset demonic possession was developmentally appropriate, or cause for concern.

:: Her stranger anxiety is abating (yay!), excepting anyone who enters the exam room at the doctor's office. She's so terrified of those exam rooms that even if we enter a small office in an unfamiliar building, she starts getting worried. Poor kid. My sweet pediatrician was like, "Sooo, you can just email me if you have a concern that you don't want to bring her into the office for." Yeah.


There you have it...Rowan at sixteen months. Most definitely a toddler, which is why sometimes (SOMETIMES), I don't mind the maddening routine of rocking her to sleep for naps - she's still so baby-like, lying in my arms and clutching her Bunny as her eyes drift shut. She's my best girl, no doubt.