19 Months

Dear Hannah,

Apparently a 19 month old is designed to be a parrot. You are repeating everything we say these days. One example is with our dog, Bubbles. I am often saying "no bubbles" for one reason or another so now you like to yell at her too saying, "no, no buh buh". Then today when I was talking to daddy and said something was driving me nuts, you were suddenly yelling, "nuts, nuts"...yikes! Guess I need to watch what I say even more closely! Your vocabulary has simply exploded. One I'd my favorite things you have been saying lately is "happy" while you give a great big smile. Adorable! You also constantly list all of your friends, asking where they are - "haddah" (Hannah), "Anne", "Will", "Dodi" (Dominic), "Carly". Your greatest achievement this past month is learning to count to ten! You can do it all by yourself...amazing! And each number actually sounds almost right. So smart!

As you approach 2 years old, we are beginning to expose you to the potty and the concept of peeing and pooping on the potty. Every night before bed we have you sick in the potty and normally you sit for a second and then pop up saying, "almos" (which in your language means all done). But the other night you actually peed! It wasn't much, but you did it and we were so proud of you! Then the following night you almost pooped on the potty, but missed and ended up pooping right on top of the clean diaper I had laid out to put on you. Good try! The funniest part is when you sit down and start grunting like your really trying to go. Haha. Not sure where you learned that.

You are still eating a ton of food throughout the day and thankfully you are still eating some a lot of healthy foods! We have managed to keep you from drinking any juice (water only), eating any fast food, or anything fried. Hoping to keep your palate very pure for as long as possible. A typical day of eating looks like this:
-Breakfast - tons of fruit and a carb (waffle, pancake, cheerios, toast, kashi cereal bar, etc.) and sometimes yogurt or an egg
-Snack - dried fruit (raisins, apricots, cranberries, prunes, etc) and a carb (dry cereal or crackers)
-Lunch - veggies (broccoli, carrots, peas, etc.), sandwich (almond butter and jelly or deli meat and cheese or hummus) or leftovers, fruit, cheese
-Snack - veggie and carb
-Dinner - usually whatever we are having or leftovers (always lots of veggies, a protein, a carb, a fruit, and some dairy

You continue to wake up every morning between 6am and 7am, but I leave you in your crib until 7am, no matter what. Amazingly, your nap has started extending a bit, to an hour or an hour and a half on a good day! Such a difference from your typical 45 minutes! I've stuck to my one hour rule (in the crib for a full hour, no matter what). You are usually in bed by 7 or 7:30pm, after we finish your bedtime routine - bath (as needed), potty time, new diaper, pjs, brush teeth and hair, story time, prayers, hugs and kisses, "good night sweetheart" song, in bed. You have to have your blankie ("bankie") and two lovies ("ludie") every time you are in your crib and sometimes even when you are out. Thankfully you are flexible with which lovies

You have become a tooting machine! You are so incredibly gassy (must be a Vaccaro gene) and it's hard not to laugh when you toot. So when you toot now, you smirk and giggle. We are trying to work on getting you to say, "excuse me", which sounds like "skoos ee". I think we are going to have to stop the giggling and just work in the manners. But man is it funny!

Other 19 month stats:
- Wearing a size 5 diaper day and night
- Wearing 18 month, 24 month and 2T clothes
- Wearing a size 6 or 7 shoe

I love you precious girl...toots and all! ;)