The Michael Family Musings: Mia, Months 19-21

So, Mia doesn’t have another doctor’s appointment until her 2 year well-check, but I felt 6 months between posts was a bit too long. Plus, I was worried that I’d start to forget things, and we’ve had quite a few milestones these last few months!

Stats:

I do not have her weight and height stats as her next doctor’s appointment isn’t for another 3 months. She can still fit in size 5 shoes, but seems to be more comfortable in 5.5 or 6. Weight wise she still fits into size 4 diapers, but she was starting to get chafing where her legs met her hips, so we moved her up to size 5. She wears 24 months or 2T clothes depending on the store. Her body is built very much like Jason’s; she is tall and has a long torso and limbs. I feel pretty confident saying that her eyes are going to remain a dark hazel (a bit closer to brown than green), and of course, her most notable feature, her fiery red hair. :-) I really have no idea which hand she’s going to end up writing with. When she is coloring, she tends to pass the crayon back and forth between her hands. When she eats, her utensil is usually in her right hand, but she seems to prefer hand-feeding with her left. I guess time

will tell!

Schedule:

Unless we’re traveling, we are on a pretty consistent schedule. She usually wakes up between 8:30 and 9 and naps around 1 after lunch time. Most days, her naps are 1.5 hour, but occasionally we’ll get lucky and she’ll sleep longer. She is still going to bed around 8 pm.

Milestones:

She regularly speaks in 3-4 word sentences. 98% of the time, I can carry on a conversation with her. While short, her sentences are also often grammatically correct. She does refer to herself and generally everyone else in the third person (‘Mia like it’, ‘Daddy at work’, etc.). She has no concept of pronouns yet (he, she, it, you, I, etc.). Her vocabulary continues to grow by several words each week.

She has all of her baby teeth except for her 2 year molars (though one of those has started coming in already. Yeah, not fun).

She can count to six by herself! Sometimes she will skip 3 and/or 4, but most of the time, she gets it right!

She can recognize quite a few colors. She seems to be best at identifying blue, purple and green.

She knows the names of the basic shapes (circles, squares, stars and triangles). She categorizes ovals as circles and rectangles as squares, so she’s catching on!

We have flashcards with the letters of the alphabet on them. She is fairly good at identifying most of the upper case letters. There are only 2 or 3 that she knows the letter by sight (M and H I remember offhand), but if you give her a choice of 3 or 4 cards and say “which one is the letter ___” she chooses the right one about 75% of the time.

She continues to show great interest in the potty. She has also successfully “gone” on the potty about 5 times. We weren’t planning to even approach potty training for another few months, but considering how much interest she’s showing, we’ve decided to accelerate that and give it a try. We’ll see how it goes! Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

She continues to use her paci, though only at night and during nap time. Since she has that molar coming in, she’s pretty attached to it. I think we’ll probably wait another few months before trying to wean from it.

She has started to show an interest in what she wears. Most days she still lets me dress her, but she’ll occasionally want to pick out her own clothes or veto something I pick out. Most days she wants to me to do her hair, either in a “ponytail or piggy tails”.

She has become very interested in birthdays. Every day, it seems to be one of her toys’ birthdays. The other day, I asked her whose birthday it was that day and she replied “yogurt!” That gave me a good chuckle!

She is almost able to climb out of her crib, so we’ll probably have to switch to a toddler bed before too much longer.

She can (pretty well) use a regular kid’s cup with a lid and straw. Sometimes, she tries to tip the cup, but usually if I remind her to keep it flat, she can drink without spilling.

She is getting much better with utensils. She still hasn’t quite mastered the spoon, but she is pretty good with her sporks. She does still seem to prefer eating with her hands. She’s also getting less messy when she eats. Luna gets more and more disappointed with this, as there’s less food on the floor for her to clean up :-)

She has a very strange obsession with receipts. When we go to a store or restaurant, she always wants to hold on to the receipt. She generally keeps them for weeks and plays with them! No idea where this came from!

Tantrums are still happening, but maybe a little less frequently than the previous 3 months. Time out seems to be an effective punishment for the moment.

We have started bartering when it comes to meal times (particularly dinner). We’ll say “eat x more bites of y and then you’ll get z”. For the most part it works!

Big Events:

We’ve celebrated quite a few holidays since the last post (Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, Valentine’s day). The holidays were tons of fun this year, as Mia was much more aware of what was going on than last year. This was the first year that she was able to eat real Thanksgiving dinner, open presents herself, enjoy the Christmas lights, and make Valentine’s!

We took Mia to the movies for the first time, and have since been to 2 others. She actually does really well in the theater provided we don’t run out of popcorn :-)

Mia went on an airplane for the first time during our Christmas trip to Ohio. She actually did really well, especially considering that our departing flight left Austin right around bedtime and didn’t arrive until midnight. Her schedule was out of whack during the whole trip, but she took it like a champ! She even napped on my lap on the returning flight for about an hour which was totally unexpected. We have another set of flights coming up in May, so fingers crossed those go over just as well!

During the trip mentioned above, Mia got to experience snow for the first time! She really loved playing in it; so much so that we often had to force her to come in so she didn’t get too cold.

Using the potty successfully is so major that I’m listing it twice!

Favorites:

Things do to: playing outside, reading, playing with blocks, dancing, bubbles, coloring, running, pretending to go ‘night night’
Characters: Minnie Mouse and Princess Belle
Books: This girl LOVES to read. I’m not exaggerating when I say that we probably read a dozen or so books every day. Some of her most requested books are ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’, ‘On the Moon’, ‘Dear Zoo’ and the Clifford books (she has quite a few). We’re also still reading the Harry Potter series before bed which she really enjoys.
Songs: She continues to be a big fan of music. We have an Amazon Echo and she’s almost figured out how to turn it on herself to listen to music. Around Christmas, her favorites were ‘Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer’ and ‘Santa Claus is coming to Town’. She likes for me to sing ‘Mister Sun’, ‘Rockaby Baby’, ‘ABCs’ and the ending song to ‘Blue’s Clues’. Her current favorite song is ‘Hallelujah’ by Pentatonix. We listen to it SO MANY TIMES a day.
Food: cheese, blueberries, yogurt, applesauce, pizza, pasta, bread, rice and fruit snacks
Toys: Wolfie, of course, her Little People Princesses, baby dolls, blocks, and her shovel and bucket set.
Shows: Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Blue’s Clues, VocabuLARRY, Sesame Street
Movie(s): Beauty and the Beast is definitely her top (we watch it several times a week), but she also enjoyed Moana when we saw it in theaters
Animals: puppies and kitties seem to be dominating right now, but when we go for walks, she’s always on the hunt for birds.

And now, for photos!