ada charlotte {21 months}

My sweet little Ada,

You are growing up. You are learning so much every single day, and you get sweeter and sassier with each new day, too! I'm seriously amazed at how much you're able to tug my heartstrings and try my patience all in the same day. You give such good hugs and kisses -- when you want to. You also like squawking repeatedly if you don't get your way, especially if we're at church. You can certainly be a handful, but I tell you every single day that I'm so grateful you're mine, because every single day I feel that. I'm so happy I get to be your mama :)

Stats

• 23.8 pounds (47%) -- Only up 1.5 pounds from last quarter, and sticking right around the same percentile.
• 33 inches (51%) -- up 1.5 inches from last quarter, too, but up 10%. I have felt like you've been eating a ton lately, so maybe you were just trying to grow really quick! :)
• Size 4 diapers by day, size 5 by night. We definitely need to size up (again!) for nighttime though, because you're always leaking through!
• I swear, you wear every size. Anything from 3-6 months to 18 months. Mostly 18 month stuff, but anything that still fits, you still wear! And a bunch of your dresses have now become shirts haha :) 

Words
Your vocabulary started EXPLODING around 19.5-20 months. So much so, that I stopped writing down every new word, but your total vocabulary is now easily 75 words. Now you try to repeat almost everything we say :) New words in the past 3 months are:

• thank you ("yang yu")
• I love you ("I lo-bee")
• diaper
• tubby
• peekaboo ("peh boo")
• grandpa (and maybe grandma)
• water ("weh-la"
• jacket ("jay-kah")
• cupcake ("kay-kah" or "way-cup")
• pat
• goodbye
• toe
• bib
• milk ("gip"/"gippy" hahaha)

• I go
• yum/yummy
• dude
• mommy
• nose
• eyelash
• eye
• ice
• broccoli ("brock-ee")
• daddy
• show
• yo
• booger
• apple
• blankie
• Jess
• pretty 
• buckle
• car
• there we/you go
• chocolate
• cookie
• help
• gross
• yucky
• sorry
• please
• Jesus
• "BAKE" a la great british baking show 😂
• froggy
• step (from stepping out of pants/pjs)
• color (sounds like "buh-la" with the emphasis on the last syllable)
• elbow
• towel

You also know many animal sounds! Though you aren't too keen to do them on command. You're much more likely to make the sounds if you see the particular animal (or what you THINK is the particular animal).

• Chick 
• Monkey 
• Cow
• Dog
• Sheep
• Cat
• Duck
• Chicken

Milestones

• I think you have four new teeth (plus the eight you had previously) and they're all molars. Some are more broken through than others, but they've all broken through to some degree!
• You know pretty much all your body parts. We have this book called "From Head to Toe" and on each page, an animal moves a certain body part ("I am a Gorilla; I thump my chest. Can you do it?"). You can do almost all of the movements because you know your body!
• Welp, you've made it to full-blown toddlerhood, complete with meltdowns! The kind where you fall limp on the floor, screaming bloody murder. You're not a fan of not getting your way!
• You're starting to learn shapes a bit. We have one of those shape sorter toys and you used to not be able to do any of the shapes, but you now always do the circles first, and then the squares, and then you're still working on stars, hearts, and triangles. 
• Your hair is long enough for the cutest pigtails 😍

Obsessions

• Cheese. You freakin' love it. You call it "nee"
• TV! We didn't let you watch much for the first year of your life, and you were never really interested. You're interested now! We let you watch the Little Baby Bum (LBB) nursery rhymes sometimes, and I swear every time I turn it off, it's the end of the world for you. Cue those toddler meltdowns I referenced above!
• Your favorite things at the park are the swings and any steering wheels.
• The Wheels on the Bus. It's pretty much every other song in LBB, and you also sing it in nursery. I think you got the actions from nursery, but it's sooo cute to watch you do "the wheels on the bus go round and round," "the babies on the bus go 'waa, waa, waa," "the mamas on the bus go 'shh, shh, shh,'" and "the wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish." You LOVE singing this song :)

• You love coloring! Doesn't matter the instrument -- crayons, chalk, pens -- you love them all! Now it's just a matter of getting you to listen to the rules surrounding coloring instruments -- like don't bite the crayons or chalk, and don't draw on the outdoor furniture with chalk! It's a struggle 😂

Random Tidbits

• As I said, you love TV, so it's one of the only ways I can get you to stay still for me to do your hair or change your diaper. I don't always use it, but it's always much MUCH easier if I do!
• We live near a train, and anytime you hear one go by, you say, "car!" I'm not sure how you made the connection that trains and cars are similar, but you refuse to learn that it's actually a train and not a car haha :)
• You started nodding yes, and I think it's so cute :)
• You have added some dance moves to your repertoire! You spin in circles (somewhat slowly) while standing up, and you also do what we call "the chicken wing," where you flap one arm (always your right) like a chicken wing! Haha :)

• You like to pinch noses and say "beep" . . . your nose, my nose, dad's nose . . . everybody's nose beeps when pinched!
• It's so fun to see your progression so clearly. A couple months ago, you were just starting to learn how to do stairs using your feet rather than hands and knees. In the beginning, you were so hesitant, and you completely required a hand to hold. Now you are much less hesitant. You'll still take a hand if it's offered, but you'll also attempt single stairs on your own. On a flight of stairs, you're still either crawling them, or you're walking them while holding hands with an adult.
• You bite your nails.
• Before we started watching LLB, we were watching Little Einsteins (then they took it off Netflix). You loved it, and for probably a solid month after it was removed from Netflix, anytime we went to turn on the TV, you'd say and do the "pat pat pat" required to make the rocket take off.
• Sometimes you walk or crawl backwards. It's so silly :)
• You hug our legs on occasion and I love it!
• You're officially tall enough to press too many buttons. You're always trying to start the washer, dryer, and dishwasher, and you've succeeded way too many times!
• YOU'RE NOT THROWING YOUR FOOD MUCH ANYMORE! *knock on wood* It's weird, you recently became this ravenous child who eats sooo much at mealtimes, so you can't afford to throw your food anymore because you want to eat it. It's possibly because one day, I fed you eggs for breakfast and you threw them, so I didn't get you anything else. Then when you were hungry after a morning nap/rest, I got your eggs back out of the fridge to feed you that for your snack. You threw them again, so I didn't get you anything else. Then we went to the park (where you were absolutely miserable). When we came home for lunch, I gave you your eggs for a third time, and you gobbled them up. I've done this before, but I guess this time it finally clicked because I can't recall a time that you've thrown all your food since then. Hallelujah!
• I often give you fruit loops in a snack cup if we go on a walk or a car ride. We've tried to teach you to say "loops," but you say "gook" or "guk" haha. It's so funny to me :)
• We still give you milk first thing every morning and as part of your bedtime routine. For a while, you seemed to just play with your milk and start dripping it out everywhere, so I thought maybe we'd finally switch you over to a sippy cup instead of a bottle in hopes that the milk would come at a speedier rate, so you wouldn't get bored and decide to play instead. For a week or two we used a sippy, but then it's like you weren't drinking any milk at all. So then we switched back to the bottle, and now you're back to drinking more milk and playing less, and I'm really happy about it because I looooove our milk cuddle time in the morning. You just look so perfect and you're a little more calm because you're drinking (but you are also really playful so it's fun [mostly]), and I love that time I get to spend with you :)

• Can't do an update without giving a little info on your sleep! We were transitioning to one nap for a loooooong time it seems . . . but you've been solidly on one nap for about a month now. However, we still do a 20-45 minute rest (lights off, in crib) in the morning around 9am in order to help you make it to your 12:45pm nap. If you miss the rest for some reason, you honestly get so cranky, so we'll hold onto it for a little longer! You take a solid 2 hour nap and you're in bed from about 7pm-6:30am (though not necessarily sleeping that whole time . . . you usually take 30 minutes to fall asleep at night and you sometimes wake before 6:30, but for the past two days, you've slept in til 7:15 and 7:45 😱😱 completely unheard of for you!
• For a little while, you used hugs and kisses as a total stall tactic. Anytime I'd say it was time to change your diaper or go to bed, you'd give hugs and kisses to stall. I always took the bait because you're not suuuuuper affectionate for the most part. You don't do it for diaper changes anymore, but you sometimes still do it right at the end of your bedtime routine. As soon as we finish singing to you, we both give you hugs and kisses before laying you in bed, and sometimes you'll try to go back and forth and back and forth giving more hugs and kisses. So. Stinking. Cute.

Love always,

Mama