Staying in touch with the Funny Noses: Toddler transitions

Recently I have written a lot about Jake growing up too quickly. Now it's Jadyn's turn. Yesterday I was going through pictures on the computer to order hard copies. I have not done this since April and ended up ordering 1700+ photos (and yes I know how excessive that sounds). Anyway, my point is that I was looking at pictures of Jadyn around the time of her first birthday and realized how much she has changed in the last 6-8 months. Back then she still looked so much like a baby and now I have this very opininated toddler on my hands who is doing and saying new things every day. It's been awhile since I have written about Jadyn from a developmental perspective so I thought I would take the time to do so.

Jadyn has really been into looking at and reading books and coloring lately. This coupled with her YMCA class has provided a perfect opportunity to start introducing her to shapes, colors, numbers and letters. She now knows all of her shapes (sometimes confusing oval and circle), she can count to 11 and she can sing the ABC song. She seems to be having a harder time with her colors (everything is green or yellow) but she is making progress and just the fact that she is open to learning is enough for me right now.

She also really likes to sing and do finger plays, which is a welcome change since Jake never willingly did these at this age (although now he loves them too). Some of her favorites are the Wheels on the Bus and Happy if you Know it and the lesser known Turtle Song. She also sings and participates very well in her new Kindermusik class (which is for ages 18 months to 3 years old). She also really stepped up the pretend play and loves to play mommy to her babies and bears - I have caught her trying to feed them real food and juice from her sippy cups and putting them to sleep and then telling Joe, Jake and I "Shhh! Baby is sleeping". She has also becoming increasingly fixated on anything Dora the Explorer and Care Bears. In addition to her green good luck "bear bear", which has been a lovey for many moons now, she now also has to have a Dora blanket to go to sleep too. When we put an episdode of Dora on for her she screams, "Dora! Dora and Boots" and she will watch it intently and yell out the answers while on their adventure together. Finally, in her effort to keep up with Jake, Jadyn has been relentlessly trying to jump off the ground with both feet. Although on rare occasion she actually accomplished this, most often times she falls short but it is the cutest thing to watch her try and as she does so she strains her voice and says, "I'm jumping!"

What really blows me away however, is how much she is talking and not just words but whole phrases. Some that come to mind are, "That's silly", "I can't reach", "I'm hungry", "No take a nap", "Give me five", "The sun is in my eyes" (she is going to have sensitive eyes like me and now has sunglasses to wear for car rides) and the INFAMOUS, "Let me do it!". This is yet another thing that blows me away - the fact that she wants to do everything by herself. Jake was happy to let me baby him and even to this day would prefer me to help dress him and feed him, but not Jadyn. She wants to do everything by herself without help, even things she just simply never could accomplish like putting on her shoes and tying them.

Meanwhile, ever since we got back from Big Bear, Jadyn has not been sleeping so well. She seems to want Joe or I to stay in the room until she is 100% asleep and has been waking once per night, taking upwards of 1 1/2 hours to fall back asleep and then waking up earlier than normal to boot. At first we thought she had a caught a little cold. We pondered if she could be teething or constipated. We wondered if maybe having her in bed with us over last weekend had affected her sleep. In the end, we still do not know what is going through her little mind, but we decided that whatever it was, it was affecting both our sleep and hers and we had already been gearing up to convert her crib to a toddler day bed soon anyway seeing as how we have already had one isolated incident of her climbing out her crib. So, we could be making things worse but we decided to go for it and coverted her crib yesterday. So far so good. She slept in her new bed at naptime and fell asleep at night with no more help than she had been requiring. She woke in the middle of the night and was awake for about 45 minutes but because of the conversion, I was able to lie next to her and help her back to sleep. She climbed out from her bed this morning at 7:15am (which is sleeping in for her), came running out her room and exclaimed, "I'm awake!". So today I am going to consult my favorite child sleep book and see what they recommend to help with the transition and hopefully we will continue to make progress on the sleep front.

Last week, we had another milestone when Jadyn went poopy on the potty for the first time. This is a pretty big achievement in this house, especially since Jake just accomplished this feat a couple of months ago. We have been trying to take advantage of all the time and attention spent during Jake's potty training to at least get Jadyn used to the idea of sitting on the potty. She has happened to pee-pee a couple of times, usually first thing in the morning and before bath in the evening. Well on this particular evening, she wanted to sit on the big potty after Jake did and we had success! Despite making a huge deal about it, we have not had an encore performance but that is okay. Right now our goal is to get her used to the idea so she does not end up afraid like Jake was. I am thinking I can probably get her potty trained over the summer when we are home and not scurrying from one activity to another - plus with the warm weather, we can let her run around with little or no clothes.

Here is typical Jadyn - sunglasses on her head, sticker on her clothes from being good in class and getting ready to play with chalk. My sassy lil girl...............