Moi!

F, 20 months, is talking up a storm. We've entered the "me do it!" phase, when she wants to do everything by herself. She pushes my hand away when we walk, loses her s* when I attempt to put her shoes on (even though she can't do it alone), and downright planks when we try to buckle her into her car seat. Juggling a grocery shopping session with the two kids has become borderline unmanageable even with both parents present, between the constant negotiating and disappearing in the books/toys section (LP), and the constant bolting and touching everything and melting down over us trying to prevent the inevitable catastrophy (F)... (Our errands strategy needs some tweaking, me thinks). This stage of toddlerhood is really, really fun and rich developmentally-speaking, and she's absolutely adorable... You know, except when she's not.

The thing I love most about the symbolic importance of saying "moi!" (me!) (or "à moi!" (mine!)), is that it means she now fully sees herself as a subject, a person that is independent from others. When asked, she will say her name (it sounds like "Dédélite") as well as her brother's ("Pilite"), but she doesn't really uses it in sentences, yet.

Still, her vocabulary is fast expanding, to the point where my mom who hadn't seen her in a week saw a striking difference. New words are added every day, as well as new names for the people around her. She has sentences (her favorites being: "Non! Pas ça!" (No!... Not that!) when she's not pleased with something and "Non, c'est pas bon!" (No, that's not good) when referring to my cooking), verbs ("regarde" (look), "attends" (wait), "assis" (sit down) -all of these sounding pretty imperative. Her bossy tendencies are clearly shining through at this point, which cracks all three of us up. For instance, when we tell her no or rain on her parade in any other way, she'll point her index finger at us menacingly, and bark something semi-decipherable that really sounds like she's cursing us in Greek (or maybe Turkish?) 

She pretends to talk on the phone a lot, and always ends these conversation with an expeditive "Bye!," which makes my mom giggle, as it apparently sounds exactly like how M and I are saying it.

I'm not sure anymore if she really talks less than LP did? I remember that after he switched daycares exactly around the same age, there was a funny stage when every day I would ask him what he had for lunch, and he would always reply "Pa-te-ti!" (Spaghetti). Well, now when I ask her the same she always replies "Gau(ffre)!" (waffle), but when she sees a spaghetti plate in one of her books, she's started saying the word as well, exactly in the same way. The teachers at daycare all think she talks a lot for her age, and highlight the fact that she's progressed really quickly... So maybe we're under this impression that she talks less because 1-when LP was little there was only him in our extended family and so we were a lot more focused on the slightest little things he did, and 2-we have a 5 year old in the same house who almost speaks like an adult, so of course in comparison it doesn't seem like she talks so much?

She's really michievious, and funny. Overnight she developed this guttural, devilish laugh she'll only use when she's she knows she's being really silly and/or naughty (which makes me remember how she grunted a lot as a newborn). She likes hugs, and always pats the other person on the back while doing it (I guess I'm doing that with her?).

She's a mother of twins too, with her two dolls (her "bébés") we need to carry everywhere with us one day, then find dangling on the edge of the couch with their heads upside down the next. She'll imitate lots of animal sounds, from the lion to (my favorite) the donkey. Just like her brother did, she calls giraffes "oooon-cou" ("long cou", long neck), because whenever I've shown them one I've always desribed them this way.

She absolutely refuses to give up her beloved pacifier ("suce!" is whined very often in the house), and we've decided to postpone withdrawal until after our roadtrip (for everyone's sake), but I expect it will not go down easy. She doesn't have it at daycare anymore, and she loves to watch the Elmo "Bye-bye binky" video, so, small steps I guess.

She nows runs (very awkwardly-cutely), dances energetically, goes up and down the stairs completely on her own, has suddenly stopped using her high chair altogether, anwsers all of our questions. She climbs out of bed on her own when she wakes up (she usually finishes the night with us) -giving a whole new meaning to the word "bedhead", and picks which barette she wants to wear in the morning. She adores her brother (the first night he was away last week, we facetimed with him and she burst into tears because she didn't want him to go away...) but won't let him get away with anything that's unfavorable to her. She's giving us the impression that she understands basically everything we say...

She's going places, this little one.