My darling, precious daughter has been giving me many opportunities to practice my patience and skills for working with challenging behaviour over the last week or so. Biting has become a painful and unwelcome reaction to frustration, either directed to me or even her own fingers, but luckily not to other children. She is testing limits like nobody’s business, and whining and tantrumming over so many “little” things. In her defense, she’s had a bit of a cold and I’m pretty certain her two-year-old molars are coming in (we had misplaced her amber necklace for the last week or so, and in utter frustration and hopefulness, searched the house until we found it and slapped that baby on again in case it helps).
I’m so praising my stars that I actually took whole courses in problem solving challenging behaviours, and that I have just one *relatively* easy child. As easy as toddlers get, anyways (aside from the anomaly child we have been caring for, who blows me away with how easy she is).
Anyhow, let’s get down to business. Besides the crummy parts of this month’s changing development, a lot of awesome has erupted from our little miss during her last calendar page of becoming 22 months old. Here are some of the changes I’ve noticed.
There are a few words that Z’s grasped onto lately that have helped her be more involved and aware about her surroundings and what goes on in our world. While it’s a lovely developmental step, these words have made life for myself and her dear old Daddy somewhat trickier. “Self”, “Own”, “Try” and “See” have become very popular utterings from my toddler’s mouth, which she uses to ensure she is involved in what we’re doing and to make sure that we’re not trying to pull any wool over her clever blue eyes.
Recently Little Miss has been attempting to combine two or more words together to communicate her thoughts more clearly. “Buddy see” (I want to go see Buddy the frog), “Mommy food eat” (Mom, quit eating my food and eat your own, even though I’m not touching my carrot sticks) and other ideas are being shared more easily. Each month (every day, even) she seems to be exploding on the language front, using new words every day and working on figuring out all these different sounds.
Since we went to a wedding at the end of last month where there was dancing, Z has become a little party animal, enthusiastically dancing her days away. She has been enjoying different genres of music, with bluegrass and her dad’s old-school hip-hop(?) being some of her favourites, along with “Do Your Ears Hang Low” which plays on repeat, the button pushed over and over while she sternly instructs me to “Dance!” with her and whoever else is around. After the last couple days, the singing elephant may need to take a bit of a vacation to toy-land for a while before I forever rue the day her Auntie gifted her the bubbly electronic animal. Although I have to admit that getting pulled into the living room for our recent “Party! Dance!” after dinner routine has led to a lot of smiling, laughing and enjoying eachother’s company.
Along with the singing, this month Ziggity has been trying to sing. She sings little “do do do” and “la la la” songs while we drive along in the car, as we walk along, driving in the car, when she wakes up – everywhere, really – and will try to fill in some lyrics from songs she knows well, like “The More We Get Together” and “Happy Birthday” (another song which has been sung a large number of times and I wouldn’t mind if she forgot it for a while).
Those “try” and “see” words are most often used in the kitchen, as Z has continued to develop her interest in the domestic arts. She asks numerous times a day, from sun up to sun down, to “make” Annie’s pasta, cookies, soup, smoothies, or whatever we happen to be working on in the kitchen. Her current favourite is making eggs with her Dad, which she gets to help break open and “mix mix mix”. Whenever either myself or her pops even looks like we might start doing something in the kitchen, she is there, asking to “see” and running to get a chair that she pushes up to the counter so she can be busy working with us on the food. I can’t say I’m upset that she may very likely surpass my cooking “talents” before her second birthday. I’ll be more than happy to hand over the reigns to someone more competent with a recipe.
This “self” word is getting quite a workout. Exercising her independence, Little Miss Ziggity is passionate about doing many things by herself. While this is a very useful step toward her becoming capable in many self-help skills that will be invaluable to all of us in the coming years, it can be incredibly hard to sit by and watch her struggle with putting on her shoes, pants, tops, doing up her seatbelt buckles, and a wide variety of other activities that she so wants to be independent with – especially when we’re already running late.
A photo posted by Hannah Spray (@hanspray) on
Since it’s rainy season again, and Salt Spring’s finest fashion demand is a pair of rain boots, we sought a Z-sized pair out to buy which has filled two purposes: keeping those little puddle-jumping feet dry, and being the ideal footwear for independent toddlers to master donning all by themselves. When choosing children’s clothing, thinking about ease of allowing little’s to put on and take off these items themselves can offer more successful moments for the eager children as well as the frustrations of parents in a hurry.
Another area I’ve seen Z show more independence in is her movement. It’s becoming trickier and trickier to convince the little monkey to sit in a stroller, shopping cart, or even her car seat, as she’s quite adamant that she wants to “walk” everywhere by her “self”. Since distance isn’t quite something she seems to have a grasp of yet, it can take a bit of time to struggle her into her car seat while explaining it wouldn’t work for us to walk all the way across the island. When I can, though, I let her exert her independence by treading on her own two feet while we walk up the road to the farm, or other places, and I’ve been astounded at how much stamina she actually has for these treks. Whether due to the energy of a toddler, or the sheer determination to be independent, she can go for much longer than I anticipated without being picked up.
With the crazy super/blood moon eclipse that happened last week, Z had the perfect chance to further build a concept she’s shown a great deal of interest in lately: the Moon, stars, sunset, and dark (more words she’s using with an emphasis). She tries to look for the moon pretty well daily, and seems fascinated by the changing sky and the stars that come out after dark.
Z seems to have discovered the meaning behind “big” and has developed an understanding that it is best to have the biggest piece or choice of everything possible. I haven’t heard her use the opposing concept of small or little yet, but I’m sure it will come in it’s own time.
High and low are positioning words that my little Z has also found a strong interest in. It’s so interesting for me to watch as she learns both the words and the meanings behind concepts like this, rather than words for items or names of people. It really blows my mind how much these little beings can learn in such a short amount of time.
If you want to read more about what happened with this little monkey this past month, check out our weekly favourite pieces in a new series I started this month.
Week 1: Trains, Renos, Pumpkin Hugs and More.
Week 2: Frogs, Fishing, New Friends, Farms and Swimming
Week 3: Family, Festivities, Flexibility and the Fair
Week 4: Autumn Sunshine, Cormorants, Blood and a New Home
Toddlers are pretty cool (even though sometimes it feels like they’re trying to drive us mad or intentionally maim us). They’re also all so different, following their own developmental paths. What has your little one been doing and learning lately?
6 thoughts on “What You’re Doing Now: 22 Months Old”
I love when toddlers move to music and dance instinctively! That is so precious – I miss those days!
So much fun! A lot of laughter and smiling happens with the movements, and it makes my days!
It’s so much fun to keep track of what the kids were into at different stages! Looking back you will be sure to find things you had forgotten
That’s the idea! I hope it works. Sometimes I lose steam to carry on with something, but this one is a good goal, so hopefully I can keep up!
Your kid is so cute! Savour these moments 🙂
Hahaha I sure think so! Savouring as much as possible. I try to remind myself of this when we’re hanging out in the bathroom for 40 minutes while she tries to use the facilities. This is special. She is learning. It will all be over too soon. But… are you DONE yet???