20 Months

Our baby girl turned 20 months old while we were in Texas. Her personality seems to have gotten "happier" while we were there also and she started smiling more. Strange, I know, but she didn't really give out smiles prior to our trip. Now we get them all the time...and we LOVE them!

Her language is also picking up. She now has 3 words- All done, Momma, and uh-oh. She's only had Momma for about 2 weeks and Uh-oh is new this week. Hopefully she's on a roll!



She's doing really well with her signs and will do them to actually communicate with us, not just when copying a sign that we do. If she's hungry, she does the sign for eat, etc. This is so helpful for us to know what she's wanting when she's fussy. Her signs are- more, all done, eat, milk, baby, chew, thank you, help, hat, my turn and please. She's picking them up really quickly, so I need to get on the ball and teach her more!

She's still sleeping 7pm to 8am (or that's when I get her out of her bed at least). She's still taking 2 naps a day for about 2 hrs each and I really hope that continues for a while when the baby gets here. Chase dropped that morning nap around the time he turned 2, so that's what I'm thinking she'll do too. However, I think I'll just convert it to quiet time and still put her in her crib at that same time each day b/c I'll need the quiet time once the baby's here. I've already been preparing Chase for this quiet time in the mornings, as he'll be doing it too. It'll just be time in his room, on his bed, to read or rest.

("Talking" to Daddy on the phone while he was gone last week. We were waiting on her teacher to come over for the first time. She will come each week for a hour, in addition to 2 days of therapy.)

Julianna's feeding herself really well now and can use a spoon and fork pretty independently. She LOVES eating her oatmeal all by herself in the mornings now!

She's also really good at dressing and undressing herself! She can dress herself in pants, shorts, skirts, socks and shoes. She still can't put shirts on. But boy can she take them off, as she does this a lot during her naptime. She can undress herself totally- shirt, pants, shoes and socks. These skills amaze me and seem early, but I don't know that for sure.

We're still working on potty training, but nothing too serious. She tells us often that she needs to go by patting her diaper, but she doesn't do anything when she sits on the potty. She still has actually only gone once on the potty. I'm not stressing it at this point though. Just following her lead. When spring comes and I'm not pg anymore, we'll hit the road running with it, like we did with Chase.



She constantly wants to be doing what her big brother is doing. If he says that he's going to get something or do something, she looks at me and says in her own little jargon language that she's going to go do it too, and runs off after him.

She is one sweet baby girl and we love her dearly! Phil has enjoyed getting to hold her more, etc. while I've been down with my back, since I can't pick her up. He can't wait until she's a daddy's little girl and wants to snuggle with him.