Megan Update

Megan at 19 1/2 months:

• still loves shoes, any shoes really
• is also into hats, she has 3 main hats: a orange fisherman style hat with a hawaiian type hat that she refers to as her "cowboy" hat, a knit hat made by cousin "Rub-a-beka", and a white snow hat, she will gladly wear mommy's or daddy's hat too.
• knows her colors, which I think is weird, but she is right 95% of the time (black usually throws her off).
• talks in complete sentences a lot of the time, "I want to hold you mommy," "I want more juice," "Mommy have cookie, too?" (she regularly adds too on the end of phrases, sometimes it makes sense, many times it doesn't), "Megan has stripes on shirt." They aren't always that clear, but for the most part she is understandable.
• She will repeat about everything. We were at dinner the other day and she overheard us say, "appetizer" and the next thing I hear is "app-e-tiz-er." At breakfast yesterday, she said, "Pablo says, 'Poppycock' and (pause) 'bal-der-dash.' This caused my jaw to drop because she had watched that episode of Backyardigans 2 weeks ago and hadn't mentioned it since.
• She remains obsessed with the Backyardigans. She has her own Tyrone and Pablo stuffed characters and they are regular playmates. We may have to quit watching though because of questionable comments. Last week, they had an episode where one of the characters was "Madame Tasha." Well, Megan just says, "Dam Tasha"...

• She loves to play with her village people (not the group that sings YMCA). She has started to imitate pretend play, I'll regularly overhear her saying, "Fireman want donut?" followed by "I love donut, mmm" and lip-smacking. Then, she'll move onto another person, "Grandma want donut?" or she'll give everyone a bath or have everyone take a nap.
• Loves to take baths and help wash dishes.
• Regularly call people in succession on her toy cell phones. It goes sort of like this, "Hi Tracy" click, "Hi Phil" click, "Hi Grandpa" click. Recently, she has started to add additional comments or questions. I think she asked Grandpa, "How a you?" yesterday and then replied with something like, "playing with toys." He must have asked what she was doing...
• Loves markers, crayons and play-doh. Might I add, those color wonder markers are amazing!! They stay in the diaper bag on all occasions and regular come out to make visits to the doctor, restaurants, etc. much more peaceful.
• Is starting to move away from board books. We go to the library almost weekly and last time checked out all "regular" books. She would sit for an hour and let me read to her (that might just be because she knows naptime or bedtime is coming, but I'll pretend it's because she loves books). Her favorite books right now are, "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" (which I love), "Brown Bear" and "If You Take a Mouse to the Movies." I thought she was a little young at first, but then she'll say, "agin" (translation=again) at the end and will point out things in the book or talk about them later. I, for one, enjoy the change because our library doesn't have near the selection of board books as regular books and the stories tend to be more interesting than a picture of a bear and the word "Teddy Bear" on the page.
• So far, she seems like a wonderbaby, but here are her flaws. She refuses to eat any vegetables. She ate all of them at first, but now there is no amount of convincing to get her to eat a pea. Fruit tends to be in the same category.
• She is particular about her clothing and will throw fits if she doesn't like what I pick out. Lately, she has been better about this, but I think it's because I have started offering her choices and not because she is less picky.
• Can throw a mean fit about unexpected things. She doesn't do it often, but the infrequency has made it difficult for me to formulate a game plan for dealing with it.

All in all, she cracks us up regularly. She is easy going and pleasant almost all the time unless she is tired or hungry (just like her daddy). It is especially nice that she is so verbal because it makes it easier to figure out what is going on in her little head. She is a true blessing.