16 Months Old

Miss Mia continues to bring so much joy to our otherwise busy and often stressful lives. She is developing her little imagination by mimicking the people around her. She pretends to put on makeup like Mommy (she has her own “lipstick”), she pretends to give herself a bath like Daddy gives her, and she crawls around making “woof” sounds like the dogs. She loves to bring home new tricks she has learned from her friends at daycare, like spitting out her milk and putting food under her armpits. She also loves to hold out food to the dogs, let them lick it as a teaser, yank it away (I imagine, mentally yelling “psych!”), then eat it herself. Some of her other new habits and achievements:

• She graduated from her Polliwog swim class. She can “jump” off the side of the pool and go under, turn around and find her way back to the side (with our help, of course). We can let her go and she’ll make her way back to the water’s surface. And she can swim a few strokes to us.


• She loves to talk on the phone. When her grandparents call we put them on speaker. When Carol says “Mamaw loves you soooo big”, Mia holds out her hands wide, like they do when they’re together. When Dad whistles like Grandpa Al used to, Mia pretends to whistle. Usually we’ll give her the phone and she’ll walk around the house carrying it like a teenager, tucked between her ear and her shoulder so she can continue to play with her toys while she “talks”.


• She has quite the temper and is not afraid to demonstrate it in public. Mike took her to McDonald’s for a Daddy/Daughter dinner a few weeks ago and he had the nerve to tear her hamburger in half. Obviously she likes to think of herself as a big girl who can handle the whole burger so she let him know her displeasure through a series of intense shrieking and ear-shattering screams of “Nooooooo! Noooooooo!” It was so bad they had to leave. We now give her the entire burger to do with as she wishes. Some battles are not worth that much fight.


• Changing time has become quite a physical challenge for Mommy and Daddy. Mia no longer wants to sit still for such a mundane chore. I have tried to distract her through various bits of trickery, such as snacks, ribbons, toys, books, etc., but our girl is on to us. On Saturday as I was changing a massive poopy diaper, I gave her a book to read. As soon as the diaper was down, she stuck the book in the poop. When I grabbed it to avoid spreading the mess, she retaliated by sticking her hands in it and flipping over. So I had a dirty book in one hand, her feet in the other and she was on her stomach, in essence rolling around in her poo. Cleaning those type of messes have prompted dreams of potty training…


• Except that she actually did poop on the potty last week, and that didn’t go so well either. Mia is very regular so I know when it’s coming. So one morning as I noticed the onset of her grunts, I grabbed her and ran to the potty. She screamed as I sat her down, but the work was already in progress so she finished. When she was done, Mike and I clapped and cheered and made a big fuss, telling her how proud we were that she went poopy on the potty. We even got her up to show her the poopy to which we were referring. We pointed at it, clapped for it, did some cheers, and Mia really started getting into it. We did such a great job convincing her how great that poop was, that she picked it up to take with her. So Mommy had to grab her arm and fling the poop back into the potty. Then came the washing of the poopy hands while still not having addressed the poopy bottom. Another FYI: wiping the bottom is not nearly as easy as it sounds.


• Mia’s vocabulary is really astounding to us. She will repeat just about any word we say, whether she understands the meaning or not. But there are so many words that she does understand and it still surprises me when she knows the difference between car and truck, when she says please, or when she points to my shirt and says blue. Also, I’m not longer Nah Nah and usually not even Mama, and Mike is no longer Dada. We’re Mommy and Daddy most of the time.


• Although very much a girly girl, Mia is also incredibly brave. She will climb on anything, flip over her toys to see how they work underneath and will jump off anything high, whether it be our bed, the couch or into Papa’s pool.


• Her hair is getting long enough for pigtails but she still doesn’t really want to keep them in. She’d rather pull things out to see how they work (and taste). The only way I can get her to keep bows in for any length of time is to tell her how pretty she looks and let her look at herself in the mirror. Like I said, she’s a girly girl.