A friend recently told me that the 18-22 month stage was her favorite part (so far) of her children’s lives. I can see what she’s talking about, as Zoe is a blast to be around these days!
Zoe is as active as ever – always running around the house (often making me chase her when it’s time to eat or get dressed), and climbing and bouncing around. She still loves to dance and sing, and these days it’s common for us to wake up to her crib-rendition of the ABCs. She has a mischievous side and, like other kids her age, she definitely knows when she’s doing something she shouldn’t be doing. (She usually gives us a little look before running away and laughing.)
She talks a lot, and her vocabulary continues to grow. The word she says most often (after Mommy and Daddy) is probably “please,” which she uses for pretty much everything. (We taught her to say that instead of saying “mine” or grunting, and it has worked well so far.) Most of the words she uses are pronounced correctly, with a few (cute) exceptions: the aforementioned please is “pleesh,” butterfly is “fwutterfly,” fish is “sishie,” yellow is “yew-woah” and elbow is “elboo.” She has also a few special names for objects: a blanket is “night-night,” and, rather strangely, a shoe sounds sort of like “frees.” (For the longest time we couldn’t figure out what she meant when she said this.) She has also started using multiple-word phrases, such as “thank you, Daddy” and “here you go, Mommy.” And just a few days ago, when Zoe heard the garage door open, she looked up at me and said “Daddy home.”
One of our favorite (relatively) new words is “yeh.” For the past month or so, Zoe has been able to give us yes or no answers, which makes caring for her (usually) a lot easier. She has strong opinions on things, and her “yeh” helps determine what we’ll feed her, what books we’ll read to her, etc. Along the same lines, she doesn’t say “no” (something I complained about as recently as last month) nearly as much.
In terms of milestones, Zoe recently identified herself for the first time. (During a round of “where’s Mommy?/where’s Daddy?/where’s Zoe?” she pointed to herself – and she now seems to understand that she is, indeed, Zoe.) And for several weeks now, she’s been able to identify (by pointing to) several dozen objects in books. Some are fairly common things that she’s recognized for awhile (e.g. baby, dog, shoes), but she has surprised us by being able to point out more unusual things (e.g. zebra, blueberry, pumpkin). I think things sink in faster with kids than we realize!
Other fun stuff: When asked if it’s time for a diaper change, she’ll often get a diaper from her little bin, plunk herself down on the floor and look up with a proud smile. It’s clear she wants us to be impressed with her willingness to help. And, on a similar note, for days after our 600-day “photo shoot” with Lou Seal, she would grab Lou and lie on the floor every time we took out the camera. She obviously thought this was what we wanted her to do – which was quite cute!
And speaking of cute, I’ve said here many times before that Zoe hasn’t always been the most affectionate girl. That seems to have changed lately, as she often comes up to me or Q with a hug and a kiss (and without even being asked). She’s especially fond of kissing – which she does by making “fishie” lips and then smacking her lips together afterwards. I’m not sure if this is just a phase – and she’ll eventually return to her old ways – but I’ll take what I can get!
-M
