13 months...

Hello, Diane!

Whether your toddler's been walking for months or is still happy just cruising, one thing's for sure: She's not about to slow down. With great delight, she'll soon learn that walking frees her hands to unroll reams of toilet paper, knock glasses off coffee tables, and empty your bedside drawers. What to do? Spend lots of time at the park, and notch up your childproofing efforts so your toddler has plenty of space to explore without getting hurt.

I just got this in my inbox today, right after seeing Eleanor remove all of the Kleenex from the box I just bought today.  She is giving me one good work out.  I am constantly putting back the books she unshelved, the clothes she removed from the drawers, the laundry she removed from baskets, the shoes she removed from the shoe-shelf, the rags from the rag drawer, and so on.  Henry did not prepare me for this.  He never one time took a book off the shelf.  He never unraveled toilet paper, he didn't rip things, knock things over, throw things, etc.  He was perfectly content to just be.

I vividly recall being at my friend Liz's house and watching in horror as her son Josh did all of these things and thinking how lucky I was to not have to deal with that.  Ha! I do now!  When Henry was a toddler I did notice he was not like the other toddlers.  He was not rambunctious.  He was uber-compliant.  He sat in my lap and liked to be read to for over an hour (I still have yet to be able to read one single book to E before she rips it out of my hands and tosses it).  I just can't get over how different they are.  It's actually cool.  It sounds like I'm complaining but really I'm just pointing these things out so the kids can look back one day and know about their early years.  I know this will all be over so quickly.  I am just trying to ground myself in the now.

Sleeping and eating are not worth noting at this time due to her week-long cold.  But needless to say, neither are good.  Eleanor has shed many of her former words (haven't heard her say mama in forever) and now she just says, "This!" and "That!" pointing at things for us to take her to or get for her.  She also says "Up" a lot and then "dog" .  She will say "Yes" and "da-da" but not often.

(Update: By the end of today, Yes and DaDa were said frequently.  Da-da when I showed her pictures of them together and "Yes" in the same manner she says "This" and "That".  So now we have three words from her that mean exactly the same thing= "Give me".