20 months

So today N is 20 months old.

We have added a few body parts to repertoire. She now knows: nose, hair, mouth, hand, belly, foot, and knee. Eye still eludes her. I think this is because she uses the "I" sound to mean so many other things that she really gets stuck on it meaning her eye. I can see her brain working hard when I ask it, but she just hasn't registered that one yet.

We have a new animal sound. The monkey says "oo oo". The cow still says "mooo". Everything else still says "ack ack", especially the duck and the dog.

She loves to stand on the sofa across the room and push her hands down while saying "dow" until I say "down" and then she plops down, giggling, pops back up and we repeat this game.
In her crib she likes to gather her blankets up in a pile and then throw herself onto them. She is a thrillseeker, but it doesn't appear to be sensory-related.

If she sees an open chair, she is THERE. She loves to climb up on the rocker we started keeping in the living room. She tends to get down off it by squeezing under the arm rails, which has meant I needed to rescue her a few times when her head got caught, but I think I have taught her that she needs to turn her head to fit it through, so she can do that better on her own now.
This morning she thought it would be great to hike herself from the sofa arm to the sofa back...there is no wall behind this sofa, just hardwood floor. Mommy did not like this idea and we played the "down" game again.

She uses drawer pulls to scale cabinets and reach things formerly out of reach.

She loves for me to sing to her, even though mama is an awful singer.
She has her own little recliner that Grandmom and Grandpa gave her for Christmas, but we haven't shown her yet that it reclines because parental help is needed for that and we don't want to go there yet.

She likes to imitate the word "twinkle" in "twinkle, twinkle, little star" and it is too cute.

Every now and then she will repeat a random word we say.

She understands "are you hungry?" and she understands when I tell her to turn off the TV in the master bedroom that she can reach. She understands when we ask her to get something. She still points a lot to learn what things are called.

She loves to "give me five" or ten.
We bought her a toy broom yesterday and this is her new favorite toy. She played with it all evening and it was the first thing she went for this morning. If I could just bottle it and release it in 12 years....

We also bought a bubble gun and she played with her first bubbles last night. She did not succeed in catching any in her mouth, but not for lack of trying.

The Wonder Pets is, by far, her favorite TV show. She responded to it back in October and it is Still The One.


I'm trying to use up the size 3 diapers and get her into the size 4's. She can still wear some 12 month and is comfortably wearing lots of 18 month stuff. She is 31 inches tall and 26.5 lbs. This has bumped her up to around 12% on the growth chart for girls for height and 60-70% for weight. Her head circumference is at 50%. Her weight for height percentile is 90%. This is all excellent news!

On the 9th, we did our social worker visit that is required for the six month post-placement report for Russia and the social worker told us that N is the happiest, most well attached and well adjusted international adoptee she has ever seen. She was amazed. N had been diagnosed with an ear infection that morning, but I had used the numbing drops on her and given her ibuprofen for her fever and she was her normal smiling, happy self. She demonstrated very good attachment to us. Would not go to the social worker or the SW she brought as a trainee and turned to us instead. Got up and played the kissing game where she goes between DH and me on the sofa getting kisses. Got down and played and came back to us regularly to check in and get a hug. Came running for a kiss when I made the smooching sound.Our attachment with her has gone very well. From the first time we met her almost a year ago, she has always made great eye contact with us and enjoyed being held, hugged, and kissed. She loves face-to-face contact. She no longer approaches strangers with abandon and definitely doesn't go up to everyone asking to be held like she used to. She throws tantrums and freely expresses displeasure with us.

She has never hoarded food or demonstrated feeding issues and when she does get upset, she is easily consolable. She enjoys our approval and attention and often demands our attention like any child her age would, but she also plays independently. She has not displayed any sensory issues.

Our one lingering issue is that she won't go to sleep without someone in the room. She will go into a room on her own and shut the door, but she doesn't like for us to shut the door and if we try to leave the room while she is awake in her crib, she works herself into quite a state. We've decided that attachment is still too important and fragile at this stage to push the issue and do a Supernanny-style separation method. I prefer to get her down early enough that we still have some alone time at night, but some nights she just won't sleep and I end up going to bed in her room. She has been sleeping through the night really well. Except for the night she woke with a fever and the ear infection. That was horrible. She just screamed and screamed and we didn't know what the problem was other than the fever. It was awful.

We do still give her a bottle at night and will continue that for a while. It is good for our bonding and she missed that for the first year of her life. I am probably going to change over from formula to milk now to cut the calories. When we first brought her home, our doctor told us to use formula and I've kept with it because of the added DHA's and proteins and such, but it is probably time to cut back a little on the calories. I need to find a local pediatrician (ours is currently 40 minutes away but has an international adoption practice) and get some opinions there.

She willingly hangs out while I do her hair...she has gotten quite used to it and tolerates it very well. I do still let her sport what I call her "Elizabeth Taylor hair" around the house a lot, though, to give her scalp a break.As you can see, she is completely and utterly infatuated with shoes. She likes to wear mine and C's and can walk quite well in them. She loves to put shoes on us. If we have our shoe-less feet up, she will come hang shoes off them. She isn't able to get hers on, but she loves taking them off and trying.