Dear Siena – 20 Months

Dear Siena,

These updates have gotten away from me and this is now 16 days late but that’s not going to stop me from writing it! You’re growing up right before our eyes and I don’t want to forget a thing.

This month your language continued to explode as you add more vocabulary, concepts, sentences and even songs to your repertoire. Early in the month you pointed at the bowl of veggies on the counter and said “Two onions in a bucket!” which blew us away! Although you don’t know how to count, you do understand the concept of two. As the month went on, you continued to amaze us with more and more sentences and you seem to understand the concept of “yours” (or “mommy’s”) and “mine” as well. You learned to sing the phrase “Happy Birthday to you” and you’ve mastered concepts like dark vs. light (“Dark in here!”), upstairs vs. downstairs, over and under, and many more.

You continue to love to read and finally, you are more interested in story books than in books with just pictures of things. Your favorite, by far, is the Pout Pout Fish book (which was my favorite when you were an infant and sat in my lap long enough for me to finish a book). You ask for it by name and love to repeat the end of the book by saying “Smooch!”

Your other favorite book is “Everyone Poops” and a small board book we got you about going potty. You will even “read” both of these books to yourself, shouting things like “Elephant poop! Peee-ew!” which is pretty hilarious. We bought you a small potty which we keep in the downstairs bathroom. You like to sit on it, mostly when I’m also going potty, but when we ask you if you want us to take your diaper off you always say no. I’m not in a rush to potty train you – I plan to wait until you tell me you’re ready. 

You’re really good with names. If you meet someone, you will remember their name right away and when they leave, say goodbye to them by name and then ask where they went. An hour, or a day or two later, you’ll ask about them. You are obsessed with asking where people went when they leave the room or leave completely.

You’re still really picky, although I’m thankful that you love all fruit. You love carbs too and learned to eat bagels and even a little pasta (no tomato sauce) this month, though we don’t eat those things often. One time I left you with the cream cheese container for just a minute and you used it as moisturizer! Your favorite food remains as yogurt and if we ask you what you want to eat at any time, that’s pretty much your answer!

Your favorite things are water (the water table, washing your hands, the bath, the ocean, the pool, ANYTHING that involved water), being spun in circles by your dad, watching the trash truck come on Thursdays, dogs, your stuffed animals and dolls, and pretending to change your doll or stuffed animals diapers. You are still obsessed with babies and every time we meet up with Allison, Beau and Lincoln, you make me hold you up so you can stare at Lincoln.

You spend your Tuesday mornings at your friend Emi’s house with her nanny Becca and you absolutely love them and ask about them all the time. You’ll continue to go there until July when you start pre-school two mornings a week! Grandma Christy still visits every Thursday to watch you and spends the night so your dad and I can go on a date night Thursday nights and so she can watch you Friday morning. It helps me SO much to have this help and your dad and I really appreciate the alone time together.

We went to a lot of birthday parties last month (which is how you learned to sing Happy Birthday), had a lot of play dates at the park (including a few with Sarah and her new baby Avery), went to the children’s museum, went to the beach and the pool once or twice (it’s been gloomy!), and overall had a lot of fun!

I love you so much Siena!

Love,

Mommy