I didn’t keep notes this month, which was dumb. It means I have to try to remember stuff off the top of my head, and that never works very well when it comes to reviewing a month of child development. It also makes for a more disjointed post.

Basically everything is refining: She moves better, she speaks a bit more clearly, her actions are more focused and concise. She has figured out her straw cups, so she no longer tips them up like a regular cup to try to get at what’s inside to end up sucking air through the straw instead. She’s dropped her early morning nursing session, but she’ll often touch base after breakfast for a bit.

Owlet has used “go” for a while now. A couple of weeks ago, she learned “stop” when we were driving somewhere. So it was an enthusiastic “Go, go, go!” and a somewhat annoyed “stop” all the way home as we obeyed stop signs and traffic lights. “Thank you” is becoming clearer and is sometimes volunteered before she is reminded to say it, but most of the time we have to prompt her. She’s just at such a different verbal level than Sparky was at this age, and I have to keep reminding myself that this is more within normal parameters. I think I caught her singing the other day, but I didn’t recognize the tune or any of the words. HRH taught her how to tap her foot, and she does it in a hilarious stompy way when she hears music with a strong beat.

HRH cut down the legs of her sidecar crib-turned-changing table, and it is now a little daybed/settee for her in the living room, as we had originally envisioned. It’s wonderful: she can climb up on it with much more ease than she can the regular loveseat, and she can stand on it to look out the window.

I finally found winter boots that open far enough so that we can jam them onto her feet and actually fit the tops over her chubby calves, in a box that Debra had passed along to us. The downside to that is they also fall off her feet after a while, unless she’s walking.

Walking! Yesterday she walked the entire block from where we park the car to Sparky’s school, and she adored every second of it. We practised ‘stop’ and ‘go’ along the way: we’d stop and say, “Stop!” Then she’d wait a bit, say, “Go, go, go!” and start walking again. She’d never been into holding my hand before, preferring to clutch them close to her chest like a little squirrel as she stumps along, but yesterday she actually held one of my fingers as we strolled. It was just lovely.

The crayons were going well until the molars started really annoying her, and biting them became more interesting than colouring with them. Her right lower molar finally cut a couple of days ago, though it still has a lot of growing to do. Now the left one, stuck in a huge swollen lump on her gum, can join it at any time, thank you. For the first time, she’s got a fever in relation to teething and she has an inconsistent appetite (unless it’s yogourt, blueberries, or raspberries, or cheese, which are anytime foods). Although it’s possible that she’s actually ill, I suppose.

She has taken to wearing a plastic star-shaped cookie cutter as a bracelet. It was in a mixing bowl of random kitchen stuff I assembled for her to play with one day, and she puts it on every morning. She even insisted on wearing it out to pick Sparky up from school the other day, over her mitten and puffy snow jacket cuff.

She’s still great at understanding directions. She can push her high chair over to the table when I ask her to before lunch. She has become very interested in the animals and people from the Fisher Price sets, and likes arranging them in the Fisher Price school bus. She can identify a picture of an Angry Bird at any size, thanks to her brother’s obsession with them. She likes to pull open the drawer with the miscellaneous kitchen stuff it it and pull out measuring spoons, scoops, and cookie cutters. She also likes the drawer with all the tea towels and oven mitts in it.

She loves books, and will choose known ones over and over again. You can see her looking at each page with a little smile, recognizing everything on it. She still contributes little ‘no’s here and there, if the text has something like ‘no’ or ‘never’ on it. She said “tinkle tinkle” this morning while reading a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star board book, and supplied the “are” at the end of the phrase when I waited for her to tell me what came next. She also likes trying to put books back on the shelf… with the emphasis on trying.

She’s pretty miserable right now, with this final molar. She’s running a low fever, and is kind of listless (actually sitting down to watch TV is kind of unknown, which is what she’s doing right now; she usually buzzes around with toys and snacks and pauses now and again to watch while standing in the middle of the room). It’s the quietest she’s ever been. It’s also a bit unusual, because usually she gets crazy when she’s in pain. She is waking up crying frequently, but averaging more hours asleep than usual.

Her daily schedule looks like this these days: She wakes up between 6:30 and 7:00, has breakfast, then plays and reads books. We take Sparky to school at 8:35, then we come home for about 9:00, and she naps from about 9:30 to 11:00. When she wakes up we run errands if necessary (or if we have the energy, ahem), then have lunch between 12:00 and 12:30. After lunch we watch Sesame Street, and the afternoon nap happens from about 2:00 to 3:30. Then we go get Sparky from school. Everyone has a snack around 4:15 after we’ve unpacked, and then I try to juggle supervising Sparky’s homework, keeping Owlet occupied so she doesn’t blow a gasket or distract Sparky too much, and getting dinner going. HRH gets home around 5:00 and whisks her off to play downstairs while Sparky finishes up his homework and I do the bulk of dinner. We eat dinner at 6:00; if it is a bath night then the bath happens around 6:30 or 6:45, and she is in bed by 7:00.

She’s fun, even though she never stops moving, and that’s kind of draining. I love it when she and her brother play together; they enjoy one another’s company very much, something for which I am very thankful.