This month Sonia has picked up on a few important concepts that are making our interactions with her much fuller. She is also working her way up the growth charts, weighing in at 24 lb 12 oz (60%) and reaching 34″ tall (80%).
The first and most important of the new concepts she has learned is the negative. While she has been able to say “no” for awhile, it was more of a reaction to us trying to do something that she didn’t want. Now, she definitely understands what it means when we ask her not to do something, or say “don’t,” and she is starting to be able to use it herself. For example, when we say that Lovey is in the crib, she can say, “Lovey not here.” Along with this, she is starting to answer yes or no questions more often with a “nope” when the answer is incorrect. For example if she thought she heard the garbage truck coming up the street but then runs over to the window and it’s not here yet, she’ll say, “nope.”
Unfortunately, even though she understands “don’t” and “stop,” she is already starting to pick and choose when to comply. The biggest areas of challenge tend to be kicking her feet at the dinner table, standing/jumping on chairs and couches, and new boundaries that we have to set as she starts to do more. The last one is likely partly due to the complexity of the new requests. For example, she can throw her balls outside, but inside she has to roll them, but she can’t roll them in the kitchen because of the hot stove. It doesn’t help that each of her 3 primary caregivers set different boundaries for these new and nuanced things. With the kicking at the table, though, it has gotten to the point of purposeful disobedience. When she’s about to disobey, we can tell because she gets a bit of a glimmer in her eye and a smirk on her face and then says the thing that she is not supposed to do. We try to use the positive as much as possible, such as getting her to say where we can kick (e.g. on the mat, in the air, etc), but small punishments have been initiated, such as holding her legs uncomfortably or picking her up from the table when she does it.
Another major concept Sonia is starting to understand is asking and responding to who, what and where questions. It started with just saying “right there” to where questions, but now she can say things like “on bench” or “under table.” She is now starting to ask these questions herself, too, such as by saying “Where Monkey go?” while searching for him. I have also been impressed with the variety of things she can talk about when I quiz her about what she did at My Gym, for example. She can say what she played with as well as who was there with her. If she doesn’t know the answer, or doesn’t have the words, she still replies “yeah” though – which is probably still about 75% of the time.
Sonia’s vocabulary of verbs has expanded greatly as well, and she is finally starting to add some consonants to the end of her words – especially “t”, “p”, “k” and “n”. We can now tell the difference between “milk” and “mail” and “on” or “off” out of context. This is helpful as she is starting to have and express very detailed preferences. For example, her cheese stick needs to be pulled apart rather than whole and given to her in the orange cup instead of the pink cup with the lid on instead of off.
Also this month, Sonia finally got her colors! She’s still a little iffy on purple vs. blue, purple vs. pink and yellow vs. orange, etc, but that is to be expected. Now on to focusing on perfecting the alphabet and counting 🙂
Sonia has also now added Hide and Seek to her repertoire of favorite playtime activities, although she much prefers to be the one seeking – she doesn’t quite get hiding yet. She still loves stickers and coloring, too, and is even getting a little better at keeping herself and her surroundings clean while doing it.
At her doctor’s appointment Sonia surprised us by being very calm while she was weighed and measured, being shy, but still saying “Hi Dr. A,” and not even flinching when she got her 2 shots! What a difference from last visit! She really is growing up.