Cara is 23 months old!

I've been trying to post this for a week, but I've been having problems uploading videos-which we all know are crucial to a blog post! :)

Cara is 23 months, so close to being 2, and this month has had some really major developments, and some big difficulties. A few months back, I reminded myself to enjoy the perfectly blissful stage of 17-21 months where things were fun, calm, compliant, talkative and easy. I'm glad I was intentional to soak that in, because that stage is not here anymore. Being almost 2 is even more fun in different ways, but it also brought challenges in unexpected ways.

Stats:

• weighs about 32 lbs
• is about 36 inches tall
• still no news on the molars front, but they've gotta come some time! I think her mouth full of teeth is so cute when she laughs really big.

Milestones:

• is speaking in complete sentences: "I want that bite, Mommy! Put the other shoe on. I'm all finished." and more. I love to see her language develop daily, and I love to have conversations with her on the way home from school. I think her verbal boosts come more often when she is at school all day around all the chatter. :)
• talking TO people: "I went potty, Po! Went down the slide, Daddy!"
• her memory is so good! She remembers locations from pictures, situations at school, things I tell her in advance, what she was doing the last time she saw someone. I can't get anything past her!
• sings most all of her songs by herself, in the cutest choppy little girl voice: Twinkle, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Ring Around the Rosy, Jesus Loves Me, Bus, Teapot, and more. She usually want to do it "all by self" without me helping!
• can take on/off shorts, panties, socks, shoes, can put her shirt on once it's over her head, always takes out her hairbow and yanks out hair from her rubber band--when will that stop??
• is successfully potty trained!!! It was a horrific weekend of messes and cabin fever, but she is 100% at home, and I'd say 90% at school. She wears a pull up to school because she has a problem going #2 there and at home, so we're still working on that. But more often than not, she'll keep a dry pull up at naptime and overnight and is good about asking to go when we're out or holding it until we get home. I'm so proud of her!
• uses her fork and spoon perfectly! She's even getting good at using adult-sized utensils really well. Adult cups are another story though...
• can say her ABCs and usually leaves out just X and O (it gets swallowed up in LMNOP)
• can identify # 1, 2, 8, 10 on paper (says "numba onnnnnnne")
• is now forward-facing in the carseat--life-changing! We can talk more, but we can't sneak snacks without her either. :)
• is definitely more clingy with mama again, like when she turned 1. More on that in another section.

Personality:

• persnickety--she wants things JUST SO and gets upset when things aren't as they should be. Think she's my child?? The other night, we forgot to put her monkey book in her crib, and she woke up 5 minutes later SCREAMING "Monkey book!!!!!" Lesson learned.
• fearful--this is new because she has started to become afraid of noises she hears, big things like trucks and machines, and it's hard for me to help her get through it. It's very unlike her.
• headstrong--as any 2-year-old, she knows what she wants, and doesn't want to compromise. We've already had battles about what she wears, having to put on panties vs. going "commando", when to have a nap, etc. I'm picking my battles and letting some things slide, but staying strong on others that matter to me. 
• focused--whatever she is doing, she doesn't want to stop. She will watch an entire Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (22 minutes) with minimal distraction. She watches Cinderella (90 minutes) all the way through, but we usually get up to dance and sing, or play with a small toy while it's on. But if you try to sneak it off, she notices! She loves to put stickers on a posterboard, and she doesn't want to stop until all the stickers are gone from the little book. Hobby Lobby FTW for a great craft-$5 for the posterboard, $1.99 for each sticker booklet! Fun for hours.
• funny--she makes funny faces and noises, likes to laugh and play games and have a good time, so it makes our lives happy!

Sleep:

• some trouble in this area this month...
• She's been tossing/turning and fussing at naptime, taking a long time to settle. She only sleeps about 1.5 hours, or sometimes even less.
• Nighttime is rough with crying, calling for mama, standing up in her crib whimpering, etc. She also sometimes wakes up after 10-30 minutes of sleep to cry, and occasionally will wake up at 11:30, 1:30, 4:00, etc.
• We're working again on the "cry it out" thing, because as soon as I go in there (always me, because she yells "Mama! Not Daddy! Mama!"), she cries even worse and takes longer to settle. So it's detrimental for me to go in her room, she's perfectly fine in her crib; she's just sad that we're not with her. So she needs to learn. It's reeeeeally tough to hear her cry for me and not go in there, but it has to work, so we have to be consistent.
• Bedtime routine consists of: bath/brush teeth, comb hair, turn on essential oil diffuser, rock in the chair, pray, read a book and a family devotional, sing songs, give hugs/kisses, look in the mirror so she can make a funny face, talk about what she can dream about, situate night-night friends (stuffed animals), lay her down, pat back, reassure her I will be there in the morning and turn off lights and leave. Whew! Takes about 30 minutes start to finish.

Clothes:

• size 24m or 2T clothes
• size 6 shoe (we have about 3 pair that are on rotation until the fall when I can buy more)
• size 3T-4T pull up and 2T-3T panties
• still loves pockets and LOVES to wear other people's shoes. Seriously, it's all about the shoes with this girl. Just like her mama!
• has started to accessorize herself by requesting what shoes or what bow she wants to wear!

Food:

• favorites haven't changed too much; we haven't really found much that we serve her that she won't eat.
• we don't get crazy with foods, but she eats anything that we do
• loves "kid food" like hot dogs, PBJ, pizza, chicken, etc., but we eat these sparingly
• still LOVES ketchup on anything and still loves all fruit, especially when I make it a smoothie for her!
• snacks on dried fruit, Goldfish, animal crackers, mini marshmallows, apples, fruit snacks
• wants a drink from Sonic when we go, but only wants water--she likes the cup and straw more than anything else!

Likes:

• Cinderella
• Sofia the First--bath toys, shoes, dolls, books and the show
• animals, especially Po and Harleigh
• watching Frozen
• reading her Bible (looking at the picture pages inside it)
• playing with Buck & Mimi when they visit
• swimming in the pool, especially with Mase & Murphee
• bouncing on a big ball
• ELMO! Jammies, our app, YouTube videos
• looking at pictures on someone's phone (great for killing time when we are out to a meal)
• talking to me in the back of the car on our way home from school
• running
• feeling proud when she goes potty
• being a helper
• wearing her Ariel glasses all the time

Dislikes:

• being separated from mama
• when I'm not able to hold her, she fusses unendingly
• loud noises and big machines
• being told what to do when she has a better idea
• transitioning from something she wants to keep doing
• sleeping in the carseat now that it faces forward
• definitely more dislikes this month than in the past...

Most challenging:

• Definitely the sleep regression, separation anxiety and fear
• She has started to realize that things around her can be scary, and that impacts her day-to-day feelings. For a while, every noise was "big truck get you" or "monkey from the zoo get you" even if it had been weeks since we had seen a noisy truck or been to the zoo. There's no way to rationalize with a 2-year-old, so we spent almost two entire weeks telling her constantly that the big trucks were helpers, the monkeys are at the zoo, the A/C turns on and helps our house, etc. It's slowly getting better, but the fear would wake her up at night and she would scream bloody murder worse than ever before. It made her extra clingy and fueled her separation anxiety.
• Just like when she was 1, she can't stand to be apart from me, which is hard for Chance because he wants to help, and it's overwhelming for me because I have lots on my plate at home, including taking care of Cara, but also running the house, and I can't always do that when she says, "Mama stand up, hold you on this hip." Pretty demanding and sad that I'm the only thing that can keep her happy, even irrationally.
• Sleep regression is a result of these other two things. It's been hard for her to go right to sleep because she cries that we leave her. Sometimes she hears a noise (even with the white noise machine) and wakes up and cries because she is scared. Other times it's in the middle of the night for no reason, but she just wails "Mama!" We've been letting her cry because if I go in to see her, it just resets us back to square 1. 
• It's been really hard this month to feel like I was back in the newborn trenches again with sleepless nights, sleep regression, clinginess and tears. I also haven't felt like I knew what I was doing, and that's hard to feel again. Of course, every stage is different and new, but when it's new and relatively easy, it's OK. This has been HARD. But like everything, this stage will pass, and we will move on to the next things. There is always something.

Looking forward to:

• Cara's 2nd birthday! It's going to be pink everywhere, it's going to be at our house, it's going to be more low-key than her 1st birthday, but also really fun now that she can play with her friends more!
• Going back to school. It's crazy, but it always happens. I would love to summer to last forever, but a part of me always gets excited to think about school again. I'm making a big presentation to our entire faculty about teaching at-risk students next week, and I'm anxious and excited too.

See you next month when we have a 2-year-old!!