Thirty-Two Months

Dear Peeper:

You are thirty-two months old today, and you just get more amazing and more of a total little person every day.

I'm still not doing too great about blogging all the cute and funny things you say as soon as you say them, but let's see what I can remember.

When you step down off of something, especially the raised beds in the backyard (the ones for bushes and stuff around the edge of the yard, not the veggie garden) you usually say "I got it!" So it shouldn't have surprised me when I was wearing you at the outlet mall and walked down a small set of steps and you said proudly, "Mama got it!"

You are all about "I wuv you" these days, and it just melts my heart when you say it to me. Then I remember that you're not especially discriminating about who - or what - you say it to.

The other day, we were outside and you were saying "I wuv you . . . sky! I wuv you . . . (looking around) grass! I wuv you bucket!"

Another time, you were asking to go play downstairs, and by the time I got there, you were leaning against the basement door, saying "I wuv you, downstairs. Mwah!"

A few days ago, you worked to get your hand into (almost) the right shape, and then told us, "That sign means 'I wuv you!'" I left the room for a bit, and when I got back, Mommy told me that a little while after that, you'd held up your open hand and said, "Where 'I wuv you' go?"

You've made up a couple of words that I suspect will be part of our family vocabulary forever.

Darklish: (dark-uh-wish) adj. Not quite dark, Syn: Dusk, Ex: It's not sunny. It's darklish.

Winding: (wind-ing) v. Moving air around, Syn: Blowing, Ex: Da air cuhdishawuh stopped winding.

Right now, you're in the bedroom, hitting the full-length mirror and saying "Stop doing dat!" It's interesting to note that a few weeks ago when you played this game, you'd say "Not do dat!"

Well, hell, I'm sure as soon as I hit "publish," I'll think of a hundred other stories that I should share.

So, what else is new with little old you?

Your language skills continue to develop by leaps and bounds. You now speak in complex sentences all the time, and you're starting to work on pronouns. You still often say things like "Peeper have Peeper's toy," but you're also using "I" and "me" and "my" appropriately sometimes. Interestingly, I've not heard you use "me" for "I" but maybe that's yet to come.

We're still doing our letter of the week (just started O) and you totally know your alphabet. There are a few lowercase that still give you trouble, but just tonight in the tub, you were holding up letters and telling me "Dat letter S! Dat letter Y! Dat letter R for (BoyCat)!" and so on.

Oh, and your big math news is that 4 and 8 seem to have shown back up in the past few days! For a while there, you were pretty consistant about counting "1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7-9-10!"

Speaking of counting, when you want to nurse at a time or location that's less than convenient, I usually offer to give you "goody to twenty" or, if it's really inconvenient, "goody to ten," and then counting while you nurse.

You're usually cool with that, and often go ahead and say "9, 10!" and quit before I get that far.

Lately, though, you're the one who's suggesting that we count. When I'm working (or playing) on my computer and you're watching Sesame Street on Mommy's, you'll say "Goody twenty in Mommy's chair!" and you're usually okay with either stopping or moving to my chair when we finish.

I've also started counting to ten for transitions, such as getting into the car, turning off the water (outside or in the tub), or taking a potty break, and it works very well.

Before, we were having big scenes about getting buckled up, because you wanted to run around in the front yard, but now, as soon as we walk out the door, you start playing and I start counting, and by the time I've got the doors open and the diaper bag in and I'm ready for you, I'm usually at seven or eight, and when I say "TEN!" and scoop you up, you just laugh all the way to your carseat.

Oh, did I say "potty breaks?" You are now in panties at home during the day, and you're doing fairly well with it. It's definitely still our job to tell you when to go potty (and sometimes I forget) but you're (mostly) compliant about going when we suggest it.

Once, as you were climbing up onto your stepstool and then the potty, I said "Climb aboard!" and then "All aboard the potty train!" and you thought it was hilarious.

(Yes, I know this is not original. The Baby Signs potty training book / video / system is based on that exact concept.)

Now, when it's time to go, we'll say "Chugga-chugga! Potty Train leaving the station!" and if you're in the right mood, you'll run to the potty.

One time, I said "Chugga-chugga, pooo-pooo!" and you've picked up on that, so as you run, sometimes you'll say "Pooo-pooo!"

If you're not in the right mood, you'll run past the potty and dive under the comforter that's usually piled up in the floor at the end of the bed, and I'll have to fish you out, saying "Oh no! Potty train's derailed!"

And if you're really not in the right mood, I'll just carry you, while you say "No pee-pee! No pee-pee!" and then sit you back down on the toilet repeatedly, as you say "Peeper all done!" - sometimes while pee-pee is literally coming out at that very moment.

No honey, not quite done, yet!

While we're in the bathroom, let's talk about bathtime. You love taking a bath, although it sometimes takes a bit of convincing to get you in there.

I usually say, "Hey, guess what? It's tiiiime foooor aaaaa . . . " and on a good night, you'll say "Baff!" and run in there, but sometimes you'll say "Time for play!" or "Time for watch Sesee Stweet!" or whatever it is that you'd rather be doing.

Usually I'll go ahead and get your water running and wait for "Stevie" to tell you that he's ready, and that usually gets you moving.

Who's Stevie? Why, Stevie the Elephant, who helps you bathe, of course. (You have to watch this all the way to the end to see Stevie, sorry.)

We were have big issues with getting your hair rinsed before Stevie showed up, but now, you stand in front of me and I tell you to "Look up at Stevie! Look at his big, floppy, elephant ears! What color are they? That's right, they're gray! Look at his little beady elephant eyes, and his big ol' white tusks!"

Stevie is just one of the many imaginary games you like to play. You are very into talking to your toys and showing them things and asking them questions.

A couple of days ago, I'd just made a smoothy and gave you some in a straw cup. It's wasn't a sippy cup with a straw, but one with the straw built into the side. This was a mistake, because before I even put the empty blender in the sink, I heard a "plop" and turned around to see you holding your cup upside down, with smoothy all over the floor.

I said, "Why did you dump that in the floor!?" and you said "Tigger know," and then turned to the Tigger toy that was right beside you and said "Tigger, why Peeper dump uh smoovy in da flowuh?"

He might have known, but he wasn't talking.

You also have quite the little medical practice going here. We diagnose a lot of tummy aches and perform several surgeries a day. It generally goes something like this:

Peeper: Bear need a opawashun. His tummy huhts."
Mama: Oh, okay, give him an operation.
Peeper: No, Mama do it! He need meh-sin. His tummy huhts.
Mama: Okay, where's the medicine?
Peeper: Ummm . . . Here's mehsin!
Mama: Okay, Bear, here you go . . . . all done!
Bear: I feel great! Thank you, Dr. Peeper!
Most of the medicine is applied topically, but if you do decide to prescribe an oral medication instead, you have a lovely bedtime manner while adminstering it, "Here go, Bear. Mehsin. Is it good, Bear?"

You also like to check your patients' blood pressure and listen to their hearts, or, as you tend to say "Take his stefascope."

They must be very healthy, because your diagnosis after each test is "He looks GREAT!"

When we were in Texas, you found one of those rubber tourniquets that's used for blood draws (Anonydaddy is a doctor. They have these sorts of things lying around.) and decided it was a toy.

One day, you were holding it across your mouth and saying "I am a doctor!" (Yes, when you declares who / what you're pretending to be, you say very clearly "I am a . . . ." Okay, occassionally, it's still "Peeper's a . . . . " but not often.)

Then you said, "I am Dr. C!"

That's your dentist. (I'd been talking about her, by name, the evening before.)

It took me a minute to figure it out, but then I realized that Dr. C (like all dentists these days) wears a mask when she's working on you. Well, of course!

And speaking of our trip to Texas, once again, you were a lovely traveling companion. This was your tenth trip down there and you're becoming quite the expert at the whole thing. We were lucky enough to have a row to ourselves both ways (how did that happen?!) which was nice, and you were (mostly) happy to sit in  your special-big-girl-airplane-seatbelt, and watch Happy Feet with no sound, and play with your new Wizard of Oz cards and eat lots of snacks and occassionally come over to my lap for some goody.

Actually, on the flight home, we kept running into turbulence, so the seatbelt light stayed on for quite a while, and then we both fell asleep. So, other than a couple of quicky sips while we were both buckled in (which I do not recommend, even with prehensile goodies like mine), you went goodyless for most of that flight.

(Hmm, now that I think of it, maybe that's how we got the row to ourselves. Perhaps our passenger profiles have been tagged with some sort of "naked breast" warning.)

I'm sure that's not the only profiles of us with that warning, though.

Oh well, tough goodies for them if they don't like it, you're thirty-two months old and you still like it quite a bit and that's just fine with me.

It's also fine with me that for four of the past five days, you've skipped your nap and, instead, gone to bed around 10:30 and slept ten to twelve hours. We've not been getting up to go anywhere in the mornings, so I hope you can keep that up when we get back to doing that. If you wanted to go to be more like nine or so and sleep twelve hours, that would be cool, too.

I'm a little apprehensive about the thougt of giving up naptime, but if get an earlier bedtime (for you - I'm still up just as late) out of the deal, that's cool by me.

Speaking of my bedtime, though, as you might guess, I'm actually fudging the timestamp here a bit, because it is well after midnight, and you're going to be up in the morning, so I guess that's all I've got to say about how wonderfully amazing you are this month.

I love you little girlie.


Love,
Mama