Adi at two years

We took a parent-tot gymnastics class at the rec center this summer and Adi loved the mini-trampoline. She would spend several minutes standing on it, trying to jump with both feet. Over the summer, we've had a lot of trampoline time thanks to our neighbors and friends and she really learned to jump there. Now she hops around the house, saying "Mommy, watch! Daddy, watch! Mae, watch!" She can hop, both feet off the floor, several times in a row and has a great time doing it. It is very portable entertainment! We call her our little 'jumping bean.'

While staying in a hotel room together, we learned that Adi talks in her sleep. The most common phrase seems to be, "No, Mine!" It seems that is the dynamic of their early-morning waking up: Adi talks in her sleep, waking Mae up and then Mae talks and Adi wakes up too.


Adi's is talking in 6+ word sentences and likes trying to tell Mae what to do. Several times I've been alerted to a misbehavior by Adi saying, "Mae, don't! No Mae, don't!" As Mae was climbing up the little slide at my parents house, Adi was trying to correct her: "Up stairs, Mae. Go up stairs." At lunch, she'll get upset, saying, "Use spoon, Mae." (It is pronounced 'ooze foon').

At the playground, she'll stand at the bottom of a slide and say, "I catch Mae!" She also likes to say "Adi turn!" before attempting to take a toy and "Adi do it too!" is a common sentence. She parrots just about anything we say-- even the other day when Dave and I were talking about it and he said that they repeat 'it exactly', she started repeating 'it exactly, it exactly, it exactly' as a case in point.

Her focus is strongly on Mae ("What Mae doing? Where Mae go to? Where Mae is? Me touch Mae? Me touch Mae's eye? Mae's eyes pretty.") and she often will lose interest in a toy once it is her turn because she wants to play with whatever Mae picked up instead. Her phrasing alternates between "I" and "me/my," the latter which sounds just like "Mae" so we are always asking if she means herself or Mae. Prepositions are being explored right now, with 'on' and 'in' being used a lot (not always correctly). She likes to imitate us helping Mae-- the other day, Adi washed Mae's face after a meal, and I've seen her trying to help Mae put her pants on.


She has become much more relaxed in strange places, still shy at the beginning but opening up in about half an hour to play with other kids, toys and even sometimes pet a dog. She is quite interested in animals, "Pet the doggie! Adi pet the doggie!" but occasionally can't overcome her fear until the dog leaves. Then she gets upset that she didn't get to pet the dog! Along those lines, we're definitely seeing the classic toddler indecision/regret when she has to choose between two things: she chooses one, then the other, then immediately cries that she wants the first thing again. It is so frustrating to deal with but also fascinating to see how hard it is for all of us to deal with the exclusive-ors in life.




With her advancing language, Adi is able to tell us when she is tired and wants to take a nap or go to sleep, which she'll readily do. It's no surprise, really- as an infant she had clear transitions between happy wake-time and fussiness which could only be solved by going to sleep. Her affinity for peek-a-boo hasn't decreased either; around a year ago, you could get her to stop crying most of the time by putting a blanket or box over her head and asking, "Where's Adi?" (This looked mean until you saw it work). She *still* loves peek-a-boo, whereas a lot of toddlers I know have grown out of it. She'll put her hands over her eyes and sit quietly for a rather long time until we notice, or she'll ask us "Where Adi go?". Then she flings her hands from her face and says "peek-a-boo!". (Repeat about 20 times).


We do a lot of counting around the house because I count down from 10 to warn them of a transition (e.g. "In ten seconds, you have to give the toy to Mae. 10... 9... ") When both girls started to repeat numbers backwards, we started counting upwards, too. But we rarely go past ten so we were surprised a few weeks ago when Adi counted all the way from one to eleven! She also knows some of the alphabet song (which she calls "a b c d next time won't you" and will prompt me to recite "humpy dumpy" or "hickory dock", neither of which I've been saying to her much. She's been singing tunes and just yesterday asked me to sing 'a b c d' and then sang some (unrelated) tones while I sang. It seemed like she really wanted to do a duet!

One of the biggest changes lately has been that Adi's allegiance switches between me and Dave. Starting as an infant, she was quite attached to me-- crying when I left the room or when she didn't get put to bed by me. Occasionally she'll revert to that but now she often wants Daddy to do everything. I'm pretty happy to say, "Okay, Daddy can lift you up/wash you off/carry you/play with you" or whatever the request and so far Dave is accommodating, too.


We're definitely seeing more obstinate behavior and a striving for independence. Sometimes I feel like I spend all day manipulating her into doing what I want her to do, in the following way:
Mom: Do you want me to do it for you or do you want to do it yourself?
Adi: No!
Mom: Okay, you want me to do it? [Make motion to do it]
Adi: No, myself
[Repeat for each tiny step of the process].
It is tedious but predictable and so far quite effective.

That said, there is a lot she can do herself. She's been able to put her shoes and even boots on and take them off since August. And this month she started getting her own socks on! (This might not seem that amazing if you don't have to put socks on kids, I myself find it challenging). She can pull her pants up by herself, climb into her high chair, climb into her car seat and buckle some simple buckles. We rarely attach the booster seat buckles but she often does it herself. One day I realized she was getting all the (simple) puzzle pieces into their holes, which had looked so difficult six months ago when we got the puzzles.

One more thing that I don't think I've mentioned yet-- we're pretty sure Adi is left-handed. She has used her left hand for eating utensils and often draws with it. They say this can change up to age three or so but it seems pretty well established to me.