21months

Etta all settled down in
her crib in her new room...

Etta at 21 Months

Physical Development:

Etta loves to run, and while running she likes to pump her right arm vigorously at her side. The left arm moves a bit, but it is her right arm that she works most dramatically. Daddy calls her his "little arm pumper."

She�s suddenly too tall to fit under the overhang of the kitchen counter, but continues to try to walk under there, inevitably bumping her head. She took a few hard falls this month, in addition to pinching her fingers in things and getting stung on the thumb by a yellow jacket she tried to pick up. Toward the end of the month she began cutting her 2nd year molars, which brought back all her chewing desires and an uncontrollable urge to put everything in her mouth.

She�s grown fully into a size 6 shoe now, and I�m scouting for size 7s to have on hand. Her feet seem to grow overnight, and they look larger in proportion to her body than they used to be, as if she were a puppy dog. She despises having her toenails clipped, even though I�ve never accidentally cut her skin so she shouldn�t have any fear of pain. I think she just doesn�t like the confinement that pedicures and manicures require. Her toenails do not grow straight out, but rather hug the skin and curl in at the ends, so weekly clipping is required or they begin to dig into the tips of her toes.

She has the height, coordination, and knowledge to climb out of her crib or playpen, but she doesn�t do it, which I�m grateful for. She recognizes that her crib is for sleeping, and I only put her in it for that purpose. The playpen is now her "time out" place, where she cools down with a few special toys that she plays quietly with. Sometimes she�ll get a leg up over the playpen rail, but a new fear of falling prevents her from going further.

Language Development:

I was hoping that Etta�s vocabulary would explode this month, as everyone kept suggesting it would, but she remained satisfied with her small vocabulary and many gestures. She had started creating words, however. One favorite was "bow," which she said with much drama, pursing her lips just so, and making the sound last as long as she has breath. "Bubbles" is one of the few words she could say clearly, but she decided to add a variation to that: "bub-uhl-woo" (sounds like "W"). She loves to say this while in the tub. She still makes lots of whooping sounds when she�s excited, which has earned her the nickname: "howler monkey."

Eating:

Etta�s into a pattern of barely eating any breakfast, taking a good sized lunch, and stuffing herself at dinner. This has no relation to what is served � if given french toast at breakfast she�ll take one bite and refuse the rest � if given the same food at dinner she�ll eat the whole thing and ask for more.

When we went blueberry picking Etta listened carefully as I explained that only the dark blue ones were to be picked, not the green ones, and then she went right to work picking just the darkest berries. Some went into a bucket, but most were enthusiastically popped into her mouth and devoured. An hour and perhaps 50 berries later, Etta hunched over and vomited all over herself. I took her back to the van to strip her down and wash her off and had just barely gotten her dressed again when she bolted back into the field and began eating more berries!

New foods tried this month: Fresh blueberries, fresh figs, fresh tomatoes

Other Events:

Since it is summer, daddy strung the hammock in the back garden. I tried to sit in it with Etta and she was deathly afraid, clinging to me and whimpering. I thought it odd that she should be fearful, until daddy admitted that he�d already given Etta a "ride" in the hammock by herself, and he accidentally flipped it over and she�d fallen out. Thus began Etta�s first real fear: a fear of heights. From then on, she was acutely aware of being "too high." She no longer wanted to be at the top of the slide on the climbing structure at the park, she was terrified when we walked out on Grammy�s back deck, and she refused to ride high on daddy�s shoulders (formerly a favorite).

Shortly after Etta turned 21 months, we moved her out of the nursery and into the guest bedroom. We moved just Etta�s crib into the new room, leaving the nursery intact for the new baby, who would arrive in about 6 weeks. Etta had been putting herself to sleep for a month, and I feared the change of environment might disrupt this, but on the first night in her new room, she settled into her crib as usual and was out in minutes.

Her new room is more cramped for space than the nursery was, since there is a queen size bed which takes up much of the room. There is no room for a chair or chest of drawers, so we read bedtime stories up on the queen bed surrounded by pillows, and I took the bi-fold doors off of the closet and stacked some plastic drawers on the floor below the rod of hanging clothes. Her room is cozy and functional for reading and sleeping, not for playing, which is fine since that is all we�ll use it for.