P is developing at a fast rate again. She’s hitting some kind of brain developmental mile marker.
First, she is officially potty trained!!!! Mother of God! The excitement and relief this brings me is more than I expected. She’s very proud of herself as well. We’ve now made it past a week of no accidents during the day and at night only one. I do have to get her to the toilet myself at 11ish at night. That trip makes for no bed wetting the rest of the night.
Thursday last week I realized that her bath time had become determined by the time of the day in which I had to clean her up from a poo accident. We had gotten out of our night time routine or else she would have gotten 2-3 showers/baths a day. By the end of the week she had had no accidents and therefore no baths. First thing Friday morning she got a good long shower with me. She didn’t stink or look dirty but the thought of 6 days without a cleaning is yuck.
P’s language skills are suddenly multiplying like crazy. She is speaking quite a bit and singing even more. When she watches TV she speaks the lines she knows right along. When we are listening to music she also sings along. The children’s songs she will sing along as the cd is playing and she will also sing to herself without the music. But, what gives me such a kick is to hear her sing along to ABBA or the Beatles. She sings what she can, usually its the last few words of each line. Some of ABBA’s music, like Mamma Mia, she’ll randomly sing throughout the day…”Mamma Mia! Here I go again. My my how can I resist you…” I can’t stop laughing when I hear these lyrics coming out of her mouth.
It’s not just the amount of words she’s saying that’s amazing. The use of language in the right context and with the right meaning and used with reasoning is what just blows my mind. Last week I felt like I had a friend with me. It was beautiful, fantastic and an easy week overall. Her emotions are coming right along with the words. I realized today that so far it isn’t too often that I need to ask P to “use her words”. She does that quite well. Whenever she demonstrates her emotions through body language, ie: kicking, a tantrum or pouting, I make sure to tell her I can’t understand what she is feeling unless she talks to me. I know she thrives to be understood so speaking has become a better outlet for her. Thank God.
An example of her insight is this: I was playing with her and her animals. I picked up zebra and I started speaking to him in Spanish.
P says: Zebra doesn’t speak Spanish Mamma
Me: What does he speak?
P: Only English.
Me: How can I speak to him then?
P: You can tell me and I’ll tell zebra.
It seems pretty wise to me for only 2.5
I’m noticing that when P has a developmental stretch two things come with it…well, three.
First, she sleeps a lot more. Her naps have been earlier and longer. Two, she craves doing art projects. She’s been wanting to paint, glue, draw, etc. and three, she’ll have a stellar week and the following week will be mayhem! It’s as if the one week her brain is in order and all is settled and clear. The following week it all gets really scrambled again and she out of sorts. So, this is the week where she should be out of sorts. We’ll see how it goes.
