Abigail: 21 months

Eating:  Abigail continues to eat fairly well overall although the typical toddler pickiness and varying appetite from day to day are definitely part of the norm for us.  She has been loving bread, crackers, pizza crust, and greek yogurt. We figured out that she likes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so that has been a nice back up for lunches at school when we are low on appetizers. She has shifted at breakfast from having toast with peanut butter to preferring cold bread with peanut butter but eats it pretty well overall.  She has been really interested in having pancakes lately too.  She will usually eat some chicken or fish and has done a good job eating vegetables as well. She still loves fruit!

She is still nursing morning and evening but the sessions keep getting shorter and she will skip one or the other on occasion. She will probably be ready to be done before her birthday, but we will see how it is going as it gets closer.  She has been very interested in whole milk and will ask for it with every meal where she used to sometimes prefer water.

 Sleeping:  After a little bit of a rough patch with night wakeups following our trip to Ohio, Abigail settled back into sleeping through the night pretty solidly, still sleeping from about 7:30 to 6.  There have been days where she doesn't wake up until 6:30 and I begin to wonder if she is feeling alright, but I cannot complain. Sometimes she is restless and it takes a while for her to go down at night, so we may need a new plan for bedtime in the near future.  Naps are about the same, up to 2 hours at school and over an hour at our house.

 Playing:  Abigail is so much fun right now!  She loves to play hide and seek, play with her baby doll, read books, and go outside.  She loves to blow bubbles, swim in the pool, spot airplanes, and look for cats and dogs around our complex.  Abigail has also been enjoying playdoh and stacking blocks too. 

She still really likes some songs with hand gestures, like wheels on the bus and itsy bitsy spider and baby bumblebee.  She is getting so much better at singing along and doing the gestures consistently.  Even as we read the same books, Abigail can name so many more things in the books and can anticipate what is coming next. We are often impressed with how smart she is!

Abigail also loves to "help" us around the house with taking out the trash, cooking, cleaning with a paper towel, or vacuuming!

We call her our "budding environmentalist" sometimes because Abigail will find a bug in the house, say "oh no!", pick it up and carry it outside. She will also see trash on the ground and ask to go pick it up and put it in the trash.

Growth:  Abigail is definitely getting taller and seems close to growing out of some of her 18 month clothes even though we could probably get another month or two out of some of her summer clothes.  She has been very enthusiastic about immediately declaring that anything even the slightest bit snug should be given to "baby Laura", her cousin who gets all her hand-me-downs.  Abigail is getting more independent and is trying to put on her own shorts and shoes. 

 She finally got her two top eye teeth right at the beginning of September after seeming a little cranky for a little while beforehand. That brings her total to 14 teeth. She is still working on the bottom two canines and it seems like they should be coming any day, but I said that for a while about the top ones so I am trying to be patient.  

Communication:  It is funny to look back at my post from three months ago and see a list of Abigail's words. At this point, it seems like she can say everything and is saying more and more longer phrases. She can now regularly ask for things, like 'more more bus' or 'more more trucks', which are frequent refrains in the car these days.  Abigail also frequently says "I see it" and "I did it". With help, she can turn those into longer sentences like "I see the clouds" or "I see the moon".  It has been a lot of fun to be able to communicate so much better with her and to watch the little wheels turn in her head as she puts things together. 
She is making connections all the time. For example, the other weekend we were watching an ND football game and JP was encouraging her to say "Go Irish!"  She said it a few times, then went over to the bookcase, looked around, and found the book she has called "Go Irish" about ND landmarks. 

Abigail also knows how to sign and say pretty much all the colors at this point, and will gleefully point them out when she sees them. She has gotten the concept of "two" and will also identify this on her own. We were outside one day and she saw a bike and then another bike, so she said, "bike....two...two bikes!" 

It is hard to believe she will be 2 in less than 3 months!