Thirty Months

Dear Peeper:

You are thirty months old today. Two-and-a-half. I've been calling you "almost two-and-a-half" for about six weeks now, so I'll be glad to be able to drop that modifier.

That half is pretty damn important, too. I can't believe how totally different you are than six months ago, when you turned two.

The most obvious difference, of course, is your language skills. Four months ago, you literally couldn't put two words together (but a week later, you could!) and now, here you are using complete, complex sentences - and even paragraphs - like:

Peeper pick a yellow flower herself.
Mommy feed some cheese to PerfectPup.
Look at poop. Poop! Mama's poop come out. Of booty. (In a public restroom, of course.)

Of course, most of the time no one can actually understand what you're saying but me and Mommy, but for those of us who speak your language, you are pretty much fluent.

You still aren't asking "why" questions yet, but we do get a lot of "What kind of . . . ?" and "How works?" and "____ means?" questions.

You also ask "Is it a ____?" quite a bit. Sometimes, this is a serious question, if you're trying to figure something out, like the other day, when you found a big screw hook and asked "Is it a cane?" Well, no, but it sure does look like one!

Other times, you're just being silly. For example, you might pick up a toy doggy and ask, "Is it a kitty?" Noooo. Is it a duckie?" Noooo. Is it a bear?" Noooo. Is it a doggy? It's a doggy!"

When you do this, the things you intentionally misidentify it as are always in the same category as the right answer. For example, you'd never say about the dog "Is it a car? Is it a leaf? Is is a table?"

Maybe every two-and-a-half year old does that, but personally, I'm kind of impressed.

I haven't paid a lot of attention lately to how your age-mates are talking these days (since you started actually talking, and I quit thinking "Oh my God! Did you hear what s/he said? Peeper can't even put two words together!") but I suspect that you still have some catching up to do, in terms of grammar and syntax and pronounciation, but I have no doubt that you will be right up with them before long.

And in terms of what you're saying, the actual ideas that you're expressing, I don't think you're behind there at all.

According to this milestone chart, for example, "a few kids" can name one friend and name one color by twenty-nine or thirty months, start to recognize the ABCs by twenty-seven or twenty-eight months, and use two adjectives by thirty-one or thirty-two months.

Holy crap, you've been doing all those things for ages!

On the other hand, it also says that you should be able to jump with both feet (are they supposed to actually leave the ground?) and open doors (well, maybe if you could reach the knobs) and balance on one foot (okay, I have no idea about that one, actually).

Oh, how important are those thing anyway. Hell, I have trouble with the jumping and balancing!

We've not done much in the way of "formal" learning this month, what with our trip to Texas, followed by lot of trips (especially for Mommy) to the doctor, but you're continuing to solidify your letter skills, and you're starting to say things like "___ starts with ___" spontaneously. You're not always right, but you often are. I think sometimes you just get lucky, because you like to say that things start with C (Based on the song "C is for Cookie").

You also love to count things, and just about any time there's more than one of something, you'll ask "How many?" When I tell you to count them, you always start out well, but usually end up counting "One, two, three, five-six!" no matter how many are actually there.

On your last month birthday, we took you to see the Wizard of Oz performed by the local community theatre, and you absolutely loved it. You've probably spent hours watching YouTube clips, one minute at a time, and we finally bought you the DVD, to help with keeping you entertained when Mommy had to be on the couch last week. We've watched it probably four times since then, and you absolutely love it, too.

Your favorite character is the Wicked Witch, and you've decided that you, Mommy and I are all witches, although you alternate between who's wicked and who's good.

You're not asking for the movie very often, so for now, I guess it will continue to be available. If it gets out of control (like "The Year With a Santa Claus" we might have to tell it bye-bye and put it away for a while.

Speaking of Mommy's doctors appointments - You've handled that pretty well, but it was obvious that you were missing her when she was leaving every morning, and you kind of "punished her" a bit for it. It became such a routine for a while that even now, if you can't find Mommy, you'll ask "Is she at work? Is she at doctor?"

Luckily, you're not yet familiar enough with the idea that "you go to the doctor when you're sick" nor do you know enough about the various disease options out there to be worried about all of these appointments.

We've not directly told you what we're doing (or trying to do) because we don't want you to get excited about the idea of a sibling until we're pretty sure that there's actually going to be one, but you are pretty smart and we've talked about it around you quite a bit, so I suspect you might have some suspicions that something is going on.

I have reassured you that "Mommy's okay, she just needs to go to the doctor a lot right now," and I've told you that "I wish I could explain it better, but it's grown-up stuff. But hopefully, some really good things will come of all these appointments."

No news on that yet. Mommy's started testing, but that's really just silliness at this point. Tomorrow is the same point at which we first saw a clue about you, but it was so faint that if I'd tested even a few hours earlier, I don't know that I would have seen anything. Hopefully, we'll get some good news within a few days, but it will be several days before we assume that we've gotten bad news.

But whatever happens, you will always be our baby!

Happy half birthday, big girl!


I love you!
Mama