19 months

Naomi turned 19 months last week.

This month we've really noticed that she's becoming more adventurous, and more open to new people. She warms up to people so much quicker now, and gets upset when people leave, literally...when the waiter leaves our table out a restaurant, she throws her hands out, says, "where'd go?" and then whines a little bit.

She's also incredibly affectionate. She's always very generous with her hugs and kisses for Austin and I, but nowadays, she'll hug just about anyone. Today when I picked her up from school, her daycare teacher told me how she spent a good part of the morning laughing as she figured out how to climb the steps of the slide and go down by herself at the playground. Each time she went up, she'd laugh, and squeal with delight as she slid down. One of her "friends" Matthew, joined in with her in her delight and laughter. When Naomi saw him laughing, she ran over to him and gave him a big hug. Then she ran around the class room and gave the rest of the kids hugs.

She's also becoming more and more stubborn. We've been running into hitting issues, she'll hit herself, or whoever is within reach, when she gets frustrated. We're trying to teach her to only use gentle touches and that we dont hit, and when she gets really bad, we'll give her a timeout. I think she's starting to get the idea that she'll get a timeout if she hits, but it's definitely a slow process. Of course it doesnt help that she sees kids at daycare hitting each other all the time. Twice now I've witnessed kids grabbing each other and whacking each other in the face!

She's also picked up the lovely word, "MINE". This has to be another daycare skill since we don't use that word with her at home. She used to be pretty good at sharing, but now she'll pull things away and say, "NO MINE". Is this the beginning of the terrible twos? Who knew it actually started before you actually reached 2.