19 months: all about communication (and teeth!)
Posted by laralynnian on 09 Jan 2009 at 11:31 am | Tagged as: Uncategorized
Melina turned 19 months on new year’s day and is full of fun new ways to communicate. Of course, she has the age-appropriate exponential vocabulary growth, learning multiple new words each day and specifically asking what things are called. Her current favorite is “tree!” for both trees and anything looking like a holiday decoration.
She’s not a big talker, though. Auntie Stacie recently called her “stealth” because she’s really good at sneaking around entire rooms and into drawers without anyone noticing she’s underfoot. At a new year’s day party she managed to get into a baby-proofed cupboard within five minutes of our arrival.
Beneath her quiet nature lies a strong will. At Uncle Wayne’s house on Xmas day Melina found a closet she wanted to explore but shouldn’t. I redirected her down the hall, where she decided to hurl a toy a good three feet. Of course I went to pick it up, at which time she made a bee-line in the opposite direction, back to the closet. My little girl’s first act of conscious manipulation.
A week later I attempted to redirect her away from a toy stroller she was trying to climb into. She screamed for five seconds, then suddenly turned to me, looked me straight in the eye, and said “buh bye” with a wave. As in “Leave me ALONE, Mom. I’m busy here.” This happened at least three times – not exactly good for reinforcing the redirect but it was so funny I couldn’t help myself. She did the same thing to Joey that night when he was trying to coax her away from a toy for bedtime stories.
On the physical development front, Melina has all four molars and her two top eye teeth coming in, pretty much at once. The bottom molars appeared just after Christmas, the top ones are now starting to poke through, and we can see the large white of both eye teeth heading down. She hasn’t been exceptionally fussy, so either our girl has a very high pain threshold or got lucky in how little it hurts… or the worst is yet to come.
Finally, Meli made her first (accidental) call to 911 while playing with the house phone the other day. It was especially notable because last month Kai walked into the kitchen just before dinner to announce proudly, “I just called 911!” He got a friendly lesson on 911 protocol from both of us, plus the cops when they arrived.