20 months

Reading books tonight (headband was all her idea)

Cannot believe our girl is 20 months old already.  If only 4 months, we'll have a two year old!  Jane is a super busy girl!  Favorite activities (in no particular order) include:

1. Sensory activities (e.g., playdoh, sand)
2. Baking--Jane asks to bake by pointing to the cupboard where we keep the flour and sniffing  (she doesn't understand homophones yet!).  Jane insists on doing everything herself--scooping, measuring, pouring, and even cracking the eggs (her favorite part).  Baking with Jane is very messy!
3. Art--painting, drawing, gluing
4. Building--puzzles, blocks, shape sorter
5. Pretend food
6. Being outside--we can't wait for our new house!  We close December 21!!!
7. Reading books
8. Pink dogs--In addition to joining in all the activities listed above, pink dog plays hide and seek, plays catch, chases Jane, and goes for a walk on her leash (to name a few).

Jane's comprehension continues to explode.  Jane understands most common adjectives used in daily language (including color), prepositions, and more labels every day.  Jane counts objects up to 5 pretty accurately (e.g., given 4 objects, jane says, "na na na na"), can indicate 1 or 2 objects using her fingers, and even negotiates for a higher number of items.  For example, I told her she could watch 1 cell phone video, and Jane said, "no, na na na na (1, 2, 3, 4)." Clever girl!  She got to watch 4!  Jane really loves to hear stories about things that we have done or seen in the past and asks to hear them so many times throughout the day.  Recently, we started talking about things that will happen in the future and she seems to understand those as well.

Jane has such a good sense of humor!  She plays tricks on her dogs and her mom, understands simple jokes, knows when we are teasing her, and teases us right back!

Jane's speech is progressing very slowly.  Jane gets by very well with signs, gestures  and the few words she has.  But lately, she's been getting more and more frustrated and whiny (oh do I hate her whine!) when she has difficulty expressing herself.  Speech therapy has been minimally helpful.  Her therapist has given us a few helpful suggestions, but most of the things she suggests we were already doing at home before starting speech.  We've really been emphasizing attempting to say the word along with the sign.  Jane has several of the hard consonant sounds (e.g., b, d, t) but struggles with vowel sounds--most of her hard consonant sounds are followed by the schwa sound ("uh").  Jane likes going to speech now because her therapist has a lot of fun toys.  She will tolerate her therapist but hasn't really warmed up to her. Erik and I are actually discussing stopping speech for a bit.  We feel we've gotten all we can out of it at this point in time and with this therapist.  And the next few months are going to be so busy for us.  We can always reevaluate and start back up again in a few months if there is a need (and sadly, I think there will be.  It is unlikely that she will have 200-300 words by the time she turns 2).  We hope she can learn to make sounds and words soon; life will be so much better for her when she does.  I know she has SO much to say!!

Jane loves to read books! Most days we read for at least 30 minutes before nap and 30 mintes before bed (sometimes longer) and of course several times throughout the day.  Jane remembers things from books and makes connections to things that happen in her day--her comprehension is pretty amazing!  She's also starting to get many of the jokes in books that are supposed to be funny.  Jane is outgrowing most of her old board books, so she is getting a big box of books for Christmas!  Our girl totally has favorite series and authors already--Mercer Mayer's Little Critter (only the old school ones, the new books suck!), Mo Willems' Elephant and Piggie, Mo Willems' Pigeon books, and Ian Falconer's Olivia.

We love all that our big girl can do and so looking forward to having a fun holiday season with her.  We are also enjoying our time with Jane as an only child--only a few more months before baby boy crashes her party.  It will be an adjustment.

Happy 20 months to our smart and funny girl!