21-Month "Miss"-cellany

21 months is fun. I *heart* 21 months. My elder girl is so stinking funny at 21 months. She is getting into all sorts of new things, some good, some bad. She likes to climb anything she can. She'll climb onto the counter from her Learning Tower. She tries to climb the cabinets. She climbs me. She climbs her dad. It's not uncommon for me to turn my back for a second and turn back to find her balancing on something she just climbed up on. It's a minor miracle she hasn't climbed out of her crib yet (knock on wood).

She likes to carry and pack things. She had a blast carrying all her importants in a backpack at the farm last week.

She is still our outdoor girl. The girl loves to be outside and explore. She picks things up or gathers them together. She's not afraid to get dirty.

She can say just about anything at this point and in full sentences, if not fully grammatically correct sentences. She says the funniest things sometimes, and almost always in the correct context. If I came to get her to take a nap when she was playing with her Baba (my husband's mom) at the farm last week she would say, "Bye-bye Mommy. See you next time!" Today she was talking on her pretend phone and she said something like, "Hi Grandma. All done talking. Bye-bye, see you next time" (I think "see you next time" comes from the way her favorite show "Yo Gabba Gabba" always ends).

The other day she was doing something that was driving me nuts and I snapped at her a little, "Stop it!" Well, of course today I heard her saying "stop it!" with a little frown on her face. Made me feel like a big heel. I am very careful what I say around her so she doesn't start copying even less savory words or phrases (which I admit I have been known to say on occasion :) and wouldn't you know the one time I did swear in front of her, I heard her mimicking "Dammit!" just a few seconds later. Fortunately I didn't react and she only said it once.

She also has other funny little things she does and says like "I go cazy!!" when she's dancing or "I yuuuv it!!" when she really likes something. She can sing her ABCs, count to 14 and knows all her colors and most of her shapes. She knows almost all of her letters by sight and can identify the sound each letter makes. It seems all of this stuff happened overnight too. One day she was my baby, and the next she was this funny little girl with some serious personality.

She has a little bit of sass in her too. In general she's a very good girl and usually listens when I tell her to do something. Admittedly it sometimes takes me two or three repeats of an instruction, occasionally with a bit of hands on encouragement, before she listens, but most of the time she does what I ask fairly readily. Recently however she has started letting me know when she doesn't like it by letting out a shrill scream while complying with my requests. It's like she's saying, "I'll do it, but I'm not gonna like it!!" We have had a few tantrums and their frequency has increased a bit, but so far these are usually short lived. I must admit there are moments when I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing in terms of disciplining my toddler, but we seem to be doing okay so far. And I am learning all the time and figuring it out as I go, so I'm okay with that.

Miss loves to sit on the counter while I'm getting ready and play with my makeup or hair brush. I love watching her imitate me with my makeup brushes. She also loves to have her hair done. If I ask her if she'd like to get pigtails she gets very excited, and she loves to pick out the barrette she wears and her socks. One day we were in her closet as I was selecting what she would wear that day and I held up a shirt and asked her if she liked it. Her eyes got big and she said, "oooh, booful! (beautiful)" Of course that's the shirt she wore that day. I can't get enough of the pigtails. . .

She loves to push her baby dolls around in their stroller, but even more than that of course she loves for me to push her baby dolls around. "Mommy push?" she says. So I do. She also loves to chase and be chased, so we do this often with the stroller as well. The vacuum works too.

Miss loves to play with her sister and hold her. She asked to hold her the other day so I had her sit and placed Lass sitting up between her legs. Miss grinned ear to ear and held her and hugged and kissed her for a minute. Then she kind of pushed Lass away from herself and said, "Play toys?" So I thought she was done with her sister and wanted to go play with her toys. Well she walked over to Lass's playmat and picked up some of Lass's toys, looking back at me expectantly so I would put Lass down and Miss could play with her. She loves showing her sister things.

She is also starting to get interested in manipulating things and learning how things work. She pays very close attention when I show her how to get toys on and off the play mat hooks.

She is also getting into dressing herself. And undressing herself. She loves snaps and zippers and is very eager to do up the zipper of her jammies every night. Fortunately she hasn't quite figured out how to undo the zipper. We had to abandon the few pairs of jammies she has with snaps, because I went in to check on her one night before I went to bed to find her jammies in a heap in her crib and her lying in bed with nothing but a onesie on. After she got up the next morning and I put her jammies back on her, I went to the laundry room for a minute and came back to find this.

Her near nakedness apparently inspired the urge to dance and go "cazy."

And of course the jammies were a great tool for playing a sort of hide-and-seek/wander-around-without-looking game.

She is noticing the camera more and will look at it and say "picture!"

Sometimes now I can get her to stand still for a second and maybe actually pose for the camera. Here she even said, "cheese" for her Daddy.

Bottom line? I love this age. I have loved every stage, every age so far. But I. Love. This. Age. And man I love that girl.

Speaking of love, here's a little sneak peak at a very-soon-to-be-three-month-old. I could just eat her up.