19 months

Dear Leo,

Today you are 19 months old, and your mama and I have just finished cleaning up after a party. It's only the second one we've hosted since you were born, so it's kind of a landmark. The other one, incidentally, was a year ago, and you napped through most of it.

You oscillate between fiercely independent and extremely clingy. You haven't yet learned the word "myself" from anybody (us or folks at daycare), but I won't be surprised if it's one of the next words to appear. This streak is more problematic at some times than others, and is most vexing when it comes to the issues of brushing teeth and bedtime. it's rare for us to successfully brush your teeth completely, and you tend to sit there and suck the (baby, non-fluoridated) toothpaste off the toothbrush and wiggle your entire head, rather than moving the toothbruch back and forth. You're also beginning to fight an appropriate bedtime more often -- for example, not going to bed earlier than normal even if you either didn't sleep well the night before or took a shorter-than-usual nap.

Your vocabulary is also growing by leaps and bounds. You're well past 50 words, and although I'm not counting them right now, I wouldn't be surprised if you're closer to 75. The occasional two-word phrase is starting to appear, too -- earlier today, you said "feet book" after Mama finished reading you The Foot Book. Your ASL vocabulary is growing, too, although much more slowly -- it's limited in large measure by Mama's and mine, and neither of us uses the ones that we know as consistently as we ought to.

You've reached toddlerhood full-blown with some of your first public meltdowns and tantrums. You had one on Friday when Mama went to pick you up from school, as you were having a grand old time and didn't want to leave yet. The same thing happened in the park last weekend. I more or less know that it will get worse before it gets better, and I'm not looking forward to it. Tantrums also get triggered by by somebody trying to take something away before you're ready to give it up. When you're done, you'll hand it over quite nicely, though.

Today, the weather was hot enough for us to justify filling your pool, and you loved it. When it was time to come in so that you and Mama could get ready for the party, you pitched another fit. You had a terrific time in the pool, splashing and playing with your bucket. (We got the bucket and a little spade for when we were doing yardwork, but this is the first we've been out together since.) We went out to dinner and to a free concert last night, and you were the friendliest of the thirty bajillion toddlers there, offering almost everybody in sight your hat or your crackers or a hug.

You seem to be figuring out the cause-and-effect thing, especially as it comes to rules or trying to get your own way. If we tell you something like "one more cracker and then it's time to go to bed," you'll take as long as you possibly can to eat said cracker. The same thing applied at the park the other night, since we said "One more time down the slide and then we're going home." You absolutely refused to go anywhere near the slide, even through you'd been at the top of it and sitting down not five seconds earlier!

The next month will be really busy for the grown-ups, as we'll be taking a trip to see your cousins (my cousins, too) in High Point, your Mama has another trip out of town (to school C), Mama and I have a wedding to go to, and we'll probably go to your first baseball game.


We love you,

Mama & Papa