at eighteen months.

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It's official...my little baby is one and a half, as of this past Wednesday.

What shocks me about this age is that I feel like it gets better every day - that she gets better every day. As our pediatrician pointed out yesterday (during Rowan's checkup where she didn't freak out!!!), it's such a fun age because they learn new things every day, but they're still young enough that you have control over their environments. Her four-year-old, she says, comes home making his fingers into guns...but my toddler? Not yet. For now, Rowan is sweet, funny, curious, talkative, loving, and basically my favorite person on the planet ever. (Sorry, Michael Stipe. We had a good run.)


Rowan Sophia At Eighteen Months:

:: She's into categorizing things. For example, we were looking at a picture of her with Superman at the hospital (picture below), and I said Superman goes "up up in the sky." She was quiet for a moment before perking up and saying, "Bird!" Yes! Birds are up up in the sky, too! And now she'll rattle off a whole list of things that are up up in the sky: Birds, airplanes, helicopters, rainbows, the sun, the moon. She also knows "things that keep you warm" (hats, mittens, socks, coats - and glasses, according to her, lol) and things that are loud (hair dryer, blender, vacuum, disposal).

:: Sequences are starting to make an impact on her, too. A few weeks ago, I cut my finger on something and it started to bleed. Ever since then, she'll catch a glimpse of my finger and rattle off the whole sequence of events: "Mama. Boo-boo. Blood. Band-Aid. Kiss."

:: She usually refers to herself as "Ro-Ro" - probably because most of her buddies from my moms' group call her that - but when she gets really excited about something, she thumps her chest and says, "Meee, meee, meee!" Usually it's a request to go to the basement to play, which is a new thing for her since we started carving out a play space for her down there. When she does call herself "Rowan," she pronounces it Ro-wine.

:: When we first unearthed the toy vacuum from our box of hand-me-down toys, Rowan hugged it, kissed it, snuggled with it, and played with it for hours. She always gets to choose a baby doll to bring with her to naptime, and that day? She wanted to bring the vacuum. So sweet. (I said no. So cruel.)

:: Current food loves: blueberries (always her fave), clementines, cheese, veggie burgers from Elevation Burger.

:: She's trying to put phrases and sentences together - for example, "Up up sky"; "Nigh-nigh vacuum"; "Mama up please"; "More blueberries please"; "Daddy vroom that way" (Daddy's car went that way); "Daddy go yeah" (yes, Daddy went to work). My favorite, though, is that she's starting to use descriptors correctly - two babies, little puddle, green ba-ba [pacifier]. She's still learning and using tons of baby signs, and I think they've definitely helped her comprehend color and size descriptors.

:: If you sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," she'll cover her eyes and say, "Dark, bright, dark, bright!" because in sign class the other day, the teacher turned off the lights while we sang that song. It was dark with the lights off, and bright when they came back on, and girlfriend can't stop talking about it. She also learned loud and quiet from sign class. Interestingly, she's been way less nervous around loud things since she learned those words. I think that's so fascinating.

:: Her other favorite song (besides "Twinkle Twinkle") is "Happy Birthday," and she requests it con.stant.lyyyy, ever since Daddy's birthday last week. This is her version:

:: My favorite word of hers right now is "little," because she pronounces it "nee-no." I make her say it all the time.

:: She still loves talking for inanimate objects. Dolls, her little vacuum, Elmo, the blender - Rowan makes all of them say, "Hi, Ro-Ro!" in a high-pitched voice. She also makes them all participate in whatever she's doing, from sitting in her high chair to sitting on her little potty to taking baths to getting diapers to getting boo-boos to going nigh-nigh.

Having a picnic at Gramma's, complete with tiny picnic table and tiny cohorts.

:: One day, out of the blue, she pretended to breastfeed one of her dolls. I'm assuming she figured that out after watching my sister nurse my nephew about a week earlier. I tried to get a video of her doing it so I could send it to my sister, but Rowan wouldn't do it for the camera, so I sent my sister the failed video attempt instead. Her response? "I guess she's just NEVER going to breastfeed when you want her to!" I literally laughed out loud. That's my girl!

:: She almost always says Daddy instead of Dada these days. Every once in a while, she busts out with Mommy instead of Mama. I told her we are having none of that "Mommy" business until she's MUCH older.

:: She's officially down to one nap a day, usually from about 12:30-3:00, give or take. I can't remember the last time she did two naps - it was a few weeks ago at least. I'm loving finding her looking all disheveled after a good long nap:

:: The chairs at her little art table in the kitchen become a train almost every morning. I'll be doing breakfast dishes and hear a "Choo-choooo!" warning from behind me, and then a chair slams into my calves. Rowan lines them up behind me and brings her babies over for a ride on the train.

:: She has an exceedingly cooperative personality, but she's finally learning to stand up for herself with other children - a very good thing. Previously, she would just kind of stand there, frozen, if someone else tried to take a toy or push past her. Today, for the first time, she gripped her toy harder and said, "No!" A big step! (That I'll probably resent at times - but I still maintain that "no" is a super-important word for toddlers, and especially for girls.)

:: She's made some gross motor leaps the last two months, too - she can walk down deep stairs without holding on to anything; she can walk down our hardwood stairs just holding on to my hand (she could probably do it alone, but I'm not a huge fan of head injuries, soooo...); she can tackle any slide; and she dribbles balls with her feet while she runs. We're still working on her jump shot, though:

:: If you ask her what Spiderman says, she goes, "Fwhip! Fwhip!" (It's the web-shooting noise, clearly, and she learned it because she loves the Spidermen on J.J.'s pajama pants.)

:: One day, we were getting out of my car, and I was putting her puffy winter jacket on after I unbuckled her from her car seat. I said, "Let's put your coat on, because it's cold outside." Rowan: "Yeah, brrrrr." Me: "Yeah, it's totally brrrrr today." Rowan: "Totally brr?! Totally brr! Totally brr!" Now anything that's cold is "totally brr."

:: Her favorite books right now are Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, Where Do Diggers Sleep At Night?, Are You My Mother?, Good Night Michigan, the flash cards from her baby sign language class (she "reads" each one of them out loud), and all of her "Rowan books" - the books we custom-made for her. I'll do a post about those soon, because they're so fun!

:: We went to the first session of our new play group "class" yesterday. It's for kids up to age five, and except for a fourteen-month-old boy, she was the youngest by at least a few months. They did a little circle time at the end, and during one song, all the girls were invited to come in the middle and jump up and down. Rowie can't jump with two feet yet, and I'm not sure I've ever seen anything cuter than her bouncing up and down enthusiastically and grinning her little face off while all the big girls jumped around her. Adorable.

:: Other favorite activities around town these days: Monday toddler storytime at the downtown library branch with the best librarian ever, Miss Laura; open gymnastics time at Gym America; the Hands-On Museum; and Urban Toddler.

:: Slides (pronounced "guys") are her favorite thing to do outside...and inside. She turns EVERYTHING into a slide - the hills on train tracks, the curving leg of the table, my bent legs while I'm sitting on the floor, the edge of her high chair tray, EVERYTHING - for either her baby dolls, her cars, or her little Lego figures. Or for herself.

:: She's developed a totally endearing snort-laugh when she's being tickled or chased.

:: She loves to help J.J. check his blood sugar. All you have to do is say, "Do you want to help Daddy check his blood?" and she bolts over to the kitchen and plops down on the floor, ready to help. J.J.'s been a Type I diabetic since he was seven, and I'm pretty sure Rowan knows the steps for checking his blood sugar better than I do at this point.

:: She also helps Daddy make his "hot-hot" (coffee) in the Keurig and knows every step for that, too. And? She pretends that her toy mixer (from the 80s) is a Keurig. For real:

:: Ever since the weather warmed up, you can't get this girl inside. She insists on going for "walk-walks," and she'll request that you bring either her little bike or her stroller. Then she'll direct you to the park: "That way, that way, that way, that way." God forbid you have to go a different way besides whatever direction "that way" happens to be. And she looooves splashing in puddles:

So that's my girl at one and a half. She gets sweeter every day, and every day I clutch her close and give thanks that I get to be home with her. Like, I clutch her really close. And tell her I'm going to squeeze her right up and turn her into fresh-squeezed Rowie juice and then drink her up. #TopicsForHerFutureTherapy #SorryRowan #ButAlsoSorryNotSorry