The Pope Kiddos: 20 months

Lily's language is expanding by leaps about bounds. Every once in a while she spouts out a word that I didn't know she even knew and I don't remember even saying it to her more than a couple times. Just the other day she said "broccoli" to me. She's only tried broccoli once and didn't eat it but she picked it up somewhere. A lot of words are still only understandable in context but most of the time we understand what she's saying. She really enjoys communicating with us too, she's pretty much talking all the time. I think she says "mommy" the most. She likes to say it so I say "what?" then says it again, and again, and again. I'm sure people get annoyed with our "mommy?", "what?", "mommy?", "what?" back and forth. She thinks it's funny though. She also says "book" a lot, which sounds more like "boooot" because she wants books read to her all the time. Literally, all the time. I think we must read at least 30 or so books a day. She also likes to re-read the same books again and again. Usually I make her get a different book because my brain cannot handle Brown Bear, Brown Bear what do you hear? 15 times in a row. But the bonus is that she's starting to "read" along with us, which is pretty cute. She really likes books with a rhyme or a rhythm. She likes to dance along with them as I read. Some of my favorite words that she says are "dorable" because we're always telling her she's adorable. And also, "'mon", which is how she's shortened "come on".

She loves her new kitchen that she got from Santa for Christmas. She likes to make me food to eat. She especially loves to fill up a tea cup with "water" from the sink and bring it to me. She loves it when I say I'm "all done" and always wants to get me more. She also tells me to say "please" and I have to be very specific and say "more water please". Every time she wants me to say the same thing. And we'll do this over and over again at least 4 or 5 or more times.

She loves the snow. She's always been warm, even as a little baby we had to be careful not to over-dress her so I don't think the cold really bothers her. She'd go outside without a jacket if we let her. And she loves to play in the snow. Whenever we're walking somewhere she has to walk in the snow, which usually means walking across people's yards. It's a lot easier when there's only a few inches of snow because she can still walk in it without falling down. When it's really deep she can't walk and she falls over and can't get back up. She also likes to destroy snowmen while her daddy's making them and thinks it's hilarious if anyone get's hit by a snowball.

She also moved up to her big girl bed. It has a trundle under it so it really it a tall bed too. She has a railing up on one side and the other is up against the wall and we have the trundle pulled out about halfway so she can climb in and out of bed. We decided we wanted to move her to the real bed sometime at least a couple of months before the new baby comes so the new baby can sleep in the crib and Lily won't feel like it's stealing her bed. We made the switch now because her bed has been in her room for a while and we've been talking about how it's her big girl bed and she started asking about it and said she wanted to sleep in it. So we let her. Bedtime was easy for her. She went right to sleep; no issues whatsoever. Naptime wasn't so easy. She kept getting out of bed, trying to turn the doorknob to get out of her room or just playing. We made several attempts and I kept having to resort to putting her in her crib to sleep after an hour of not sleeping. Then one day we got home late after an active day and she slept in her bed without issue. The next day she laid down at her normal naptime of 10 AM or so and more problems, so sleeping, playing, got out of bed to get a book to read and ripped the cover off it (a library book no less), etc. I finally just got her up, we ate lunch, took a walk, then took a nap, and no issue again. The same thing played out the next day and I finally figured out what the problem was. It wasn't the bed that was the problem, it was just the time of her nap. And ever since she's been sleeping great in her bed. We are so lucky with her sleeping abilities. She goes to sleep so easily and has so a long time. I worry this means our next child won't sleep. Hopefully we'll be equally lucky again.

She absolutely loved the holidays. She loved the decorations. She loved the lights. She loved the presents. She had at least 3 gifts to open every night of Chanukah since we had 8 gifts for her and she also had gifts from her Bauby and Grandpa, Great-Bauby and Great-Grandpa and Uncle Gary and Aunt Cat. And every night when she was done opening presents she said "more, more" (which she still says and signs simultaneously). Daddy was up into the wee hours of Christmas morning setting up her new kitchen. She had a great time opening up all her gifts. We Skyped (video conference) with her Grandma and Papa while Lily opened her gifts. We were sad not to be celebrating with them in Redding so it sort of made up for it. Lily also got to talk to her Uncle Grant all the way in the Dominican Republic. Next year we'll be celebrating Christmas with the whole Horrocks clan in California.