Happy 21 Months!

Happy New Year!  We're old and boring so we spent New Year's Eve at home for the second year in a row.  Eggy ended up taking a 30 minute nap for the whole day so she was knocked out before 7:30pm.  We watched the celebrations on TV and were in bed by 12:05pm.  Exciting, I know.

Sorry, but I realized that all the pictures I took of Eggy this month, I've already posted.  So this post is mostly for me to remind me what Eggy was like at this age.  And you get recycled pictures from the year.

I feel like we went through a lot this month.

Eggy went for her 6 month check up at the dentist.  She cried, of course, but I think it was mostly because she had to lie down with her head in the dentist's lap.  At least, her mouth was open from all the screaming and crying so the dentist could check her teeth.  Yay, no cavities!  The dentist did suggest flossing Eggy's teeth because her teeth are kind of close together.  I haven't really started yet.  I should though especially once her second year molars come in.

Eggy's just taking one nap a day now.  It was a weird transition.  We went back and forth a lot the past couple months.  She'd sleep fine for her morning nap (at 11am) but her afternoon nap (at 4pm-ish) would vary from 30 minutes to over an hour.  Sometimes, she wouldn't even take her afternoon nap; she's just lay there.  So we tried to get her to take just one nap (pushed back to 1pm), hoping that she'd sleep a little longer, but she'd still wake up after just an hour.  And she'd all cranky the rest of the day and her sleep at night wouldn't be as good.  So we'd have to go back to two naps again.  And she'd sleep really well for about a week for both naps but then she'd go back to sleeping all weird again.  So we moved up her nap time to noon (instead of 1pm) and she seemed to do better.  Also, we had to move up her bedtime to about 7:40pm (from 8pm).  The upside to that is Eggy seems to be sleeping in a little bit more.  Instead of waking up at 7am, she'll wake up between 7:30 - 8am.
In the beginning, I really really missed those two naps.  Going to one nap was tiring for me too.  Sure, the two naps were a little restricting sometimes, especially when we wanted to go somewhere or be somewhere, but two naps equaled about 2-2 1/2 solid hours of quiet, just me time.  It was a good break.  I needed those breaks.  Now, I'm lucky if I get an hour and a half.  But like I said, now we have more time and freedom to go out and do more things.

I can hardly keep up with all the new words that Eggy is saying these days.  It seems like she's learning a new word or two every day.  She mimics us a lot but I don't know if she's just repeating after us or if she really knows what she's saying.  So I don't count it as a word unless she uses it on her own.  But a lot of times, we don't understand her and it's not until later that we figure out what she's telling us.

• Toby - except she calls him, "babo" which incidentally means stupid in korean.  Her eemoh isn't thrilled about having her dog be called a dummy.  
• Eemoh's name
• Donald - as in the duck
• boots
• kong - beans in korean
• chip
• dduk -korean rice cake
• coat
• Crong - from Pororo
• Bravo! 
• dinner
• bucket
• balloon
• oh-ee - cucumber in korean
• corn
• (bell) pepper - but she only says, "peppuh" and not the bell part
• onion - Eggy learned all these veggies from her new toys!
• paper
• ji-ji - dirty 
• diaper
• banana
• orange - the color and the fruit
• green
• red - except she says, "elmo" but she means red
• blue - She used to say everything was blue but now I think she gets what different colors mean.  
• two - Although I'm not sure if she 100% understands what two means.  Sometimes, she'll hold up two things and say, "two!" but if I ask her how many fingers while holding up just one, she still says, "two."
• uh buh - piggyback in korean
• No! - I hate this one.  It sucks.  I tell her to do something and it's, "no no, no no."  Sometimes, she'll even wag her pointer finger too.  What?!?  You little....!  I really hope she grows out of this phase but something tells me it's not happening any time soon.

That's a lot of new words, right?  So with all these new words in Eggy's vocabulary, you would think that communicating would be a lot easier, right?  Yes, in some ways.  But I can also tell that it frustrates her more not to be able to get her point across.  She'll say something and repeat it multiple times because we don't understand what she's saying and I can see it in her eyes, like "Why the hell don't you get it?!?"  So she cries a lot about that.  I try not to lose my patience with her because I know it's not her fault that she can't say the right words yet but I also don't want to end up spoiling her.  Parenting is a tricky balance.

Anyway, we went through some ups and downs in 2010 but overall, it was still a great year.  I wouldn't mind if 2011 brought more of the same.  There'll be some new challenges (Eggy's terrible two's, being a first time home owner, not having the help of family so close by) but I'm optimistic.  I hope 2011 brings you all love, good health, and happiness!

A year ago, 2010!