twenty-one months

Cate reached the ripe old age of 21 months on Sunday. There was no trip to the doctor to check her stats. I'm pretty sure she's still somewhere close to that 50th percentile. I think she might weigh around 25 pounds (with her clothes on...and possibly her boots). That's what the digital bathroom scale read once when she stayed on it long enough to register something.

Her language explosion continues to amaze and thrill me.

She's still going strong with the sign for more. Now she's added the sound muh when she bumps her fists together. The only problem with the whole muh thing is that sometimes we have no idea what she wants more of. It becomes a guessing game. More cheese? More milk? More tickles? It's a good thing she knows how to say nooooo.

She can say yes too. It comes out as yeah and I think it's the cutest word she says.

She says something that sounds like cheese (more like deeesssss but I know what she means since she's pointing to the cheese in the fridge when she says it).

Cate says hi and bye a lot, usually accompanied by a wave of her hand. She likes to put a little purse on her arm and then come over to me and say bye (with the hand wave). Then I try to guess where she's going. Are you going to church? Noooo. Are you going to school? Noooo. Are you going to the store? Yeah.

If Dan tries to change her diaper or get her dressed or put her shoes on (or any other thing she'd rather have me do instead) she tells him nooooo. Then she comes over to me, pokes me with her little finger and says, "Ma ma ma ma."

She won't say daddy. When he comes in the door from work, many times she runs over to him and says ba ba ba ba ba. She doesn't say Danny yet. When I try to get her to say his name, she just points to him.

If I ask her how old she is, she puts up all 10 fingers. She knows her age has something to do with her fingers but she's not quite there yet. (If you ask Danny how old he is, he'll say he's 5.)

When Cate hears a sound (dog barking, train, loud truck, sirens, Danny yelling) she puts her hand over her ear and says, "Huh?"

When she eats a bite of something she likes, she says Mmmmmm. Of course, she doesn't say that when I try to get her to eat vegetables.

She says peeeees for please (and uses the sign for it too). Sometimes it just sounds like psssss.

When she can't find something, she'll wiggle both hands in the air (kind of a modified sign for all done) and say, "Go?" with a puzzled look on her face.

Sometimes I can get her to say I love you. It sounds more like wuh wuh wooo but it's adorable. Listen for yourself.

She knows lots of other words. They don't always come out sounding like the real word, but close enough. It's all about the context clues. Here's a few:

coat
shoes (sounds like zoooose)
boots
shirt
socks
eyes
water (sounds like wa wa)
truck, duck, stuck, yuck (all sound like uck)
locked (sounds like ock, says it when she can't open something)
cat
hot (sounds like ot, also says it when something is cold)
up
out
help (sounds like elp...she says this one a lot)
ouch
uh-oh
stop (sounds like bop and says it when I'm singing to her)
woah
baby (sounds like bee bee)

Her little lip pucker to get ready for a kiss is simply adorable.

I think I see a tooth poking through on her bottom right side.

She puked again last night. She's had a few really good puke-free weeks so I wasn't very happy about it. I never am.

As per her request, I rocked her for a good 20 minutes (maybe more). She loves to be rocked to sleep (or sometimes a semi-sleep with suffice). She was still awake but rubbing her eyes when I put her in bed. She cried for about 3 seconds and then up came the puke. She didn't even gag herself this time. Quite a talent.

And last, but not least, Cate can tell you the sounds for several animals, point to body parts when asked (most recently cheek and chin), sing the ABC's, write the numbers 1 through 10, and recite Pi to 14 digits.

My little girl is growing up. I'm so proud.



And just for funzies, here's a little video of Cate and Danny when he was 21 months old. It's one of my favorites.