21 months

N is 21 months old now, and has been home with us for 6 months.

Her newest body parts to know are her fingers, toes, eye brows, and cheeks. She is also firm now on her eye, ear, hair and hand...these can all sound pretty similar and she had some issues before, but now she gets them 99% of the time. She has known shoes and socks for a while and is catching on to shirt and pants now.

Her animal sounds are growing, too. In addition to cow, duck, and monkey, she now knows kitty cat, puppy dog, bird, sheep, horse, and pig (she makes this adorable snorting noise...I have no idea where she got it from...we tried to teach her "oink oink" and instead we got a true pig snort...must be from cartoons). She also does something loosely approximating a cockadoodledoo when she sees a rooster. She is quieter when we are out with other people, but she babbles and talks a lot at home. She understands quite a bit of what we say, and will go get her shoes or a toy or turn off the TV when asked. She understands what it means to put something back and this last week she started saying "night night" instead of "bye bye" when she is going off to bed. Her favorite word is still "yep". She also likes to say "here go" (here you go) and the ever-present, suitable-for-all-occasions-in-which-she-is, "all done".


Her height and weight seem to be holding pretty steady. Her favorite food...the one she never turns down, ever...is grapes. I buy lots and lots of grapes. She eats a lot of the same foods we do and still loves her veggies and is okay with some other fruits like bananas and apples, but she is quick to let me know if I pull something out of the cupboard that she is not interested in at that particular moment. She doesn't say "no" yet. She will turn her head to the side and say "ai yi yi yi yi yi" when she means no.

She is getting quite good with a fork and a spoon with certain foods. She still eats most foods with her fingers, but she can do a good job with utensils when she has a mind to do it.

She loves to give us hugs and kisses and lately she has been presenting her cheek to total strangers at the park for a kiss, which is a bit disconcerting, but she does not seem to have any real attachment issues with us. We kiss her a lot, and she isn't around many other people, so I think she just thinks it is what people do. She isn't avoidant at all and never has been...she loves to cuddle and be face to face. She knows how to give me Eskimo kisses when I say "Eskimo".She is really into up vs down right now and open vs closed. She would spend all day every day outside if we let her. She is very good about standing still and letting me do her hair...I think it is because she knows that doing her hair is one of the prerequisites for going outside.

She likes to hold her little tea pot up to our mouths for us to "drink" out of it. This morning at Kindermusik she got one of the songs/activities that she had never really understood before...the one where we wave the scarves way up high over our heads and then fall down to the ground and then repeat, repeat, repeat. I was so proud of her! The scarf was almost twice as long as she was, but she finally understood that we were all holding our scarves up and waving them around and dancing. Until now I have danced up high with her in my arms and then "fallen" down to the ground with her and then gotten back up, still holding her...very hard on my back, btw, since you do it over and over. But today she looked around and held her scarf over her head like everyone else and danced around with it and then by the end of the song she was falling down like mommy (with a good bit of prompting from me on the "down" part).


She is not a shy child. She will walk up and say "hallo" to anyone and waves "bye-bye" to anyone and everything, including cars that are sitting still. She willingly goes forward and takes her turn at Kindermusik, whether it's standing on the po-go stick or turning the special crank that makes the fun noise or going to Ms. Jeanette at the end of class for the good-bye song. She says hello and bye-bye to the other mommies, but she never goes to them to be held or for comfort. She ventures away from me but will always look over her shoulder and then come back after a while. She watches the other children and is usually very interested in what they are doing. She is the youngest in her class and the smallest by far. She loves to help put things away and is often the last child looking for items to put away after each activity.

A few days ago the A/C repair man was here for a while and he commented on how tan she is. Then a little while later he asked if my husband or me had any Hispanic in our background. (He had met C.) I told him that we did not and that she is of central Asian heritage and not Latino. Us being in Texas, I think most folks here assume that she is at least partly Hispanic and when they see me out with her they assume my husband is Hispanic. When they see all three of us together, I wonder what they are thinking, LOL! Her first name is also one that is not uncommon in Hispanic circles, so that probably adds to it. The A/C man was Hispanic, so that answered C's question as to whether she looks Hispanic to Hispanic folks. We both have brown hair and I think maybe when folks see us out together they maybe don't think about it too much since right now she does not have very obvious Asian features, but I have had a check-out person at Target ask me if she looked like her daddy. To which I said that she looks a little bit like both of us (which is true...she just didn't get any of it from either of us). I think to us she just looks like who she is and we don't see the differences that other folks maybe notice right up front.

This time last year we were frantically booking flights and worried about getting our schedules straightened out and getting ready to go meet her. We can't imagine, now, our life without her. There are times when she is whiny and frustrating and I feel like my last nerve is being frayed to tiny bits, but she is the light of our lives and a joy to have as our daughter. We consider ourselves extremely lucky and every day is a new adventure with our little sunshine.