Last week I was over at my neighbor's having coffee with a few moms when someone asked, how old is your daughter? My initial reaction was to say 18 months (the last big milestone age that she hit). Suddenly, as the words almost left my mouth, I stopped and recounted in my head. Sorry to my dear, sweet second child for not instantly knowing the answer to such a simple question. This is payback for all the years I gave my own mom a hard time about "neglecting" her second child!
Nonetheless, after a brief moment of hesitation and quick counting, I realized my baby is 20 months old! Where the past 20 months have gone remains a mystery. How did my little girl go from....
This:
to...
This:
in the blink of an eye?
Over the past 20 months we've seen a lot of ups and downs. Leah has definitely been a more challenging baby/toddler than our first one, but so many of those tougher moments are what make us love her as much as we do. For as much as she drives us insane, she puts an equal amount of effort into making us love her like crazy! For those who don't know our little monkey as well as we do, I'll list 20 things you'd probably like to know about her:
1. Leah has the cutest smile you'd ever see from the face of a toddler. There's a tiny gap between her top two teeth, which are surrounded by a couple more teeth, which are followed by a slight gap, and finally there are some molars. Her teeth have never come in like the books say they will, but that's just her style. And when she smiles, her entire face gets into it. The nose crinkles, the eyes squint, and multiple dimples appear. It's adorable. Absolutely adorable.
2. Leah has been getting speech therapy since she was a little over 17 months old. She wasn't saying any words at the time, but right at 18 months, she started building quite a vocabulary. We'll never know if it's because of the therapy or just the fact that Leah does everything when Leah decides it's time. Either way, our world is so much different now that her screams are being replaced by words.
3. Leah loves fruit. If you gave her fruit and only fruit at every meal, she'd be a happy camper. On her plate the other morning, she had fruit, yogurt, and a donut. Unlike most kids, this oddball wolfed down the fruit, gobbled up the yogurt, and ate one bite of the donut before she declared (by ripping off her bib) that she was done.
4. Leah loves her older brother. She has just started saying his name clearly and at least a hundred times a day I hear her saying "Cayub". Thankfully he has an incredible amount of patience and doesn't seem to mind that she wants his attention almost every other minute.
5. Leah will only sit and listen to an entire book if her daddy is reading it to her. Otherwise, she is a girl on the move and doesn't have the attention span to sit through an entire picture book.
6. Leah loves music. She loves to dance and sing. Her two favorite songs to sing at the moment are "Rain, Rain, Go Away" and "The ABC Song" (both of which she gets only about 1/3 of the way through).
7. Leah continues to be the most inconsistent sleeper in our family. She switches between waking up early and thus taking long naps to sleeping in late and taking short naps. There's no telling what causes her changing patterns, but we're at least happy that she remains a fairly pleasant kid no matter how much sleep she gets (unlike the rest of our family)!
8. Leah is a climber. If you turn your back for too long, she'll probably be found on top of a chair, table, couch, or something that allows her to be in a position that leaves her mom on the verge of a heart attack.
9. Leah loves buckles. Her obsession started many months ago and she now makes sure that if there is a buckle in sight, she takes a moment to clasp it together.
10. Leah could spend all day, everyday outside.
11. From the moment Leah learned to walk, she began learning to run. She mastered that skill quite quickly and now spends 95% of her time running, rather than walking, to wherever she is going. It's difficult to describe just how adorable her little body looks when she runs, but you can just picture it by imagining a tiny girl, with arms bent at the elbows pointed upward, curls bouncing, and tiny feet just hopping along.
12. Leah has a bunny and blanket that she not only sleeps with, but insists upon carrying around the house a majority of the day. In order to sneak these two very-loved items into the washing machine, I have to be very careful about my timing. I usually have to wait until she's sitting at the breakfast table with her back turned to the stairway. Otherwise, she has a radar that manages to pick up on whatever laundry basket is holding her precious possessions. When that radar goes off, you are promised at least 5 straight minutes of crying and tantrum throwing.
13. Leah is incredibly tough and manages to acquire a lot of bumps and bruises without ever making the cause known to us. If we do witness her in one of her many states of clumsiness, she usually just gets right back up and into the action. This child is far too busy to spend time crying about blood and injuries!
14. Leah has special names for all the important people in her life....Mama (me), Dada (Tyler), Cayub (Caleb), Cheney (Chesney), TiTi (Auntie Tracy), Gaga (both grandmas), Papa (both grandpas), and just recently she decided to call her other aunt, nah-nah (not sure how that's close to Auntie Kalyn, but we'll take it). It's quite comical when you get a few of these loved ones in a room, because she will quickly get confused as to whose attention she is trying to get at a particular moment. She's been known to string together a few of these names before reaching the person she truly wants to talk to...."Gaga, Papa, TiTi, Cayub" really just means she wants to say something to her brother.
15. Leah is definitely ready for potty training. She LOVES to sit on the potty and usually (when we find the time to actually put her on there) she'll poop or pee. She has even initiated needing to go by say "potty". Now, it's just a matter of figuring out when we'll squeeze in a few days of official training before baby #3 gets here!
16. Leah seems to have quite a creative side to her. She finds a lot of enjoyment in being able to build with legos, play with playdough, and even does well with coloring. Her attention span with these activities is longer than with anything else she engages in.
17. Leah has learned to say no and is beginning to use it in many, many situations. She has definitely got a stubborn side to her (always has, always will) and being able to say no has opened up a whole new world for her stubborness.
18. Leah loves to clean up. She sings her own version of the clean-up song and happily puts toys away when asked. She makes her mommy proud with her love for organization and neatness!
19. Leah is a lover. If you hold her in a rocking chair, she'll put her head down on your shoulder and say "suggle". If you're attempting to leave, she'll request a hug. If you sit down on the floor, she'll ask to sit on your lap. And if you're standing, she'll come up to you with arms raised and say "up" or "hode".
20. Leah is going to be a wonderful big sister. She is so interested in babies and likes to carry her own babies around the house. If we're out and about, she points out every baby in sight. Before the baby comes though, we'll definitely have to perfect Leah's concept of the word gentle. For someone as rough and tough as she is, that could be quite the challenge!
He's looking straight at us in this picture. The black circle at the top is his eye, his forehead is on the left, and chin on the right. According to his TiTi, he looks like an alien. I'd like to think we've produced some pretty cute, unalienlike kids thus far though and there's definitely hope for this guy!
