Another month went by

Last month on June 9th I wrote a desperate post because it had been an entire month since I had posted anything. Now it is July 9 and I have posted 13 more times since then! Jane turned 21 months a few days ago and even with all those posts I realized there were still a few things this month that I wanted to make sure I jotted down on this blog. Someday when Jane goes off to college I'll sit down and read this blog and probably bawl my eyes out. So, for that purpose:

*Jane has developed a great appreciation of music. If she ever hears a song or tune come to an end she always claps and cheers, "Yay!". This includes songs that Matt and I sing to her. Songs that she sings. Songs that she hears in the car. She even cheers for a 2 second song that may have played before I had a chance to push skip on the cd player. My favorite, though, is when she cheers for songs at church. The choir is taking their seats and Jane is standing up clapping, "Yay!" It's so cute it's hard for me to shush her.

*Jane has learned the art of "tattling." If someone takes a toy from her she runs to me saying "share" or "turn". She also try's that stunt when it's her that wants to take a toy from someone else. Funniest though is when there are a group of children playing on the playground equipment that she feels should be all to herself. She'll look at me, point at them, and yell "share" over and over again. I'm trying to explain to her that she doesn't own the place and she needs to politely squeeze by them to go down the slide.
She also tattles on inanimate objects that have hurt her in some way. If she slips on a toy car she'll run to me and then point and glare at the car crying, "car, car!"

*Ducks still remain a favorite for Jane. When we took her to D.I. for the dress shopping spree we let her browse the toy (junk?) racks. In the end she was holding 4 stuffed ducks and a whale (actually a dolphin but she refuses to call dolphins anything but whales). She carried them around awhile and I was fearing both potential outcomes: making Jane put them away or becoming the owner of 4 raggedy ducks. So I pawned the task off on Matt. He did a good job in coming back with only one duck, but failed in bringing back a dirty white bear. I later stashed the bear away on a shelf when she wasn't looking. The one duck she did come away with was a big puppet duck. She loves puppet animals. As soon as we start talking for the duck she can't contain herself and rips it off our hand so that she can hug it and squeeze it. She calls it "big duck".

*The other day I saw Jane singing and dancing in front of the mirror. She did that for quite awhile until I suppose she had gotten the lyrics and steps just right because she eventually came out to show me. She did a hilarious little jig with some hip shakes and an odd elbow in the air move. There were hardly any recognizable words in her song except for 1 phrase, said, twice, that included a certain hand movement. "La la di ba poo-poo" (complete with the grabbing of her diaper). Throughout the day I kept requesting the poo-poo dance and she happily obliged.

*Jane isn't too excited about trying new things, or old things for that matter. In some weird, deluded, seek-therapy-later sort-of way we have gotten into this routine where I have to fake crying before she'll take a bite of just about anything. Then when she takes a bite I have to act insanely excited. She tries to get me to do it with things that she wants to eat too. She'll hold up a strawberry to her mouth but before putting it in she'll say, "mommy, sad."

*One place she will ALWAYS try something new, no matter what in the world it is, is COSTCO. And she usually loves it. I have even been fooled into thinking she would eat the same thing at home so I buy the product only to find out she wants nothing to do with it. So I decided to try and re-enact the Costco experience by placing her food on toothpicks. It's worked so far. I'm afraid that once the toothpick novelty wears off I'll be constructing a white booth and donning a white jacket and white shower cap.

Here's my 21 month old with her toothpicked turkey burger.