Well, Christmas is over and the New Year is here. Between my mom's car accident and the two feet of snow we receivd the week before Christmas, it was decided that it would be best for Christmas to be held at our house. I now understand why adults are always so frantic around the holidays. I never got that as a kid, Christmas was so much fun, and I could never figure out how anyone could dread the holidays. Not that I dread Christmas, but I totally get the stress after hosting a holiday at my house and having the responsibility of making "Christmas magic" for my own child. I think it all went well, and Farah certainly had a blast, which made it all worth while. She really enjoyed her older cousin, Christian, and she got the idea that the gifts were for her this year. Her favorite gifts were her potty and her doll baby accessories, such as her high chair, cradle, and probably the biggest hit of all, the doll baby stroller.
I loved having a full two weeks home to enjoy Farah and to see her develop. By about 17-18 months she started putting together simple sentences, mostly just repeating things she heard. I think her first full sentence came at daycare, she repeated a child there by saying to her sitter, "Joyce, I'm done, " which shocked everyone! But over Christmas break she really started putting together more and more original complete sentences, such as "daddy, I want up, "which she said after I had told her no of course:) She is a total chatter box now, and continues to amaze us with her vocabulary and her ability to put her thoughts into words. It's so fun to watch her make connections and to recall things she experienced weeks or even months before. Over break we had some particuarly windy days, which makes our dog, Josie, shake like crazy. Farah figured out that the wind was making her shake, and she would say, "wind...Jo Jo shake," and you could see the thought that she put into that statement. She then transfered that to something that scared her and started saying, "I shake," whenever anything scarey happened. Yesterday, a fire truck went by us on the road with its sirens blaring and Farah responded with, "that make JoJo shake." She is also doing really well with the potty. If her bottoms are off, she always uses the potty. She even started pooping on the potty this week. But if her diaper is on, she usually just goes in that and then asks to be changed. I'm not sure when she will ask to use the potty when she's fully dressed, but this feels like good progress for her only being 20 months old. I would be estactic to have her out of diapers by her second birthday! The other major milestone we hit was to limit the use of her pacifier and milk. She definitely has an obsessive nature, and she was getting to the point where she asked for her "b" or her "milk" constantly. It got so bad I actually went on a parenting chatroom and (anonymously) posted a question about when/how to limit the use of pacifiers and the like. I got a mixed bag of answers, but the most straightforward answer was to just do it, so I did, and we survived! It was actually much, much easier than I anticipated. I think it helped that we made the changes at an age where Farah can actually understand what we're telling her. She knows that she can have her pacifier in the crib and in the car, which works out wonderfully, because now she actually really likes being in those two places! She has to have her milk in her high chair, and she still cries for her milk, but not as often. Now she says, "high chair milk." And it certainly has helped to reduce all of those little milk spots on our floors and furniture:)
