Eleanor at 21 Months

As of this morning, Eleanor now weighs 22.7 lbs, has a head circumference of 18 1/2" and is 33" tall.

She has a new word this week: "hi." She has been working on sounds a lot lately and is more willing to try to say words here and there. So far she can say: mom, dad, ball, hi, night night and sometimes, poop. After she poops, she will actually come up to me, grunt, grab or motion to her bottom, and say, "poop." She doesn't say it every time, but she does let me know that she needs a change, every time. At night she will repeat "night night" after me too. Its very cute but kind of garbled.

Although she is growing steadily, her foot growth seems to have stalled. She is still wearing a shoe size 4. She is wearing shoes that Will had grown out of by 12 months! When Will was Nora's age now, he was wearing size 6 shoes. Her feet have stayed the exact same size since she was 9 months old as far as I can tell! She is a dainty little thing!

She loves spicy foods, just like I do. She often shocks me with how spicy a food she will eat. The other day I was eating these fairly spicy habanero chips and she requested one. I gave her a small piece, thinking she'd spit it out. Instead she ate that one and 4 others and I eventually cut her off because I was afraid she'd get the spices in her eye. She will also eat spicy Indian food, spicy Chinese food and loves it when I mix sriracha into my macaroni and cheese and eagerly helps herself to many bites. Crazy kid!

Nora HATES having her hands dirty, and if she gets something on them, she will hold them out to me so that I can clean them off. She has also been spitting a lot lately. At first she would just take a drink of water and spit that all over her chest (I remember Will doing that too actually), but then it progressed to just randomly spitting on the floor. Her favorite thing to do is to take a bite of chalk, and then watch as multi-colored spit falls to the ground. She'll then step in it. Lovely!



Speaking of chalk, she has had quite the chalk obsession lately. I bought some new sidewalk chalk for the kids, and instead of just plain cylinders, these chalk sticks were in the shape of crayons. Something about the new shape really spoke to Nora and from the moment I brought them home, she had to have her hands full of chalk at all times. She started leaving chalk marks everywhere, and the crowning moment was when she took a stick of blue chalk and circumnavigated the entire house and left a blue line, two feel high, over everything: couches, cabinets, walls, and tables. UGH! So after that I confiscated all the chalk and now dole it out and monitor its use closely. Or only let them use it outside.






Its not just chalk that she is into lately. I can tell the terrible twos are approaching soon, because she is into everything (seriously she is like a walking tornado. I spend half my day just following behind her and cleaning up the wreckage) and is also suddenly climbing everything. She can now climb into her own booster seat and into her car seat, and is getting better at climbing in general. Yesterday I found her climbing to the top of her changing table. She even climbed back down like it was no big deal! Stinker!

She doesn't cry or have tantrums very often, but lately she has started showing her anger in very short bursts. She will let out a shrill scream, and either throw something (if she has something in her hand), or throw her self to the ground. Its over within seconds luckily and doesn't drag on. That scream is epic though, and hard to miss as it pierces your ear drum like a thousand tiny knives. Most times, simply acknowledging why she is upset, in an understanding way, really calms her down and ends the tantrum. Also I realized the other day the reason that her tantrums generally aren't as long or drawn out as Will's were at this age: she still nurses. Will had self-weaned by 12 months so there was not a lot of ways that I could comfort him. Nora will come to me to nurse any time she's upset, so its a very fast way to calm her down and keep her happy.

As suddenly as her love affair with her stuffed bunny, Lola began, its now over. However lately she still has to have something in her hand at all times. Sometimes its her stuffed bunny or monkey, other times its a toy car, still other times its a small object or toy of some kind. As long as one hand is full shes happy. The items go everywhere with her and tend to make things like eating and climbing difficult. Apparently I was this same way as a kid, so we know where she gets that from!

As Nora gets closer to two, she is becoming more and more challenging. My laid back kid has been super testy and prone to dramatic fits. She is also starting to stand up for herself a bit more with Will, and there have been some recent shoving matches and she even tried to bite him once. She is definitely coming into her own and I can see that the next year will be a challenging one!