Maya turned 19 months old last week and I can’t believe I didn’t do a recap! Bad mama! Mostly in this past month it’s been an explosion in vocabulary and recognition of things in her world — by sight, if not verbally.

Growth
I don’t think she’s grown any — she is still pretty small for her age, wearing 12-18 month clothes and size 4 shoes, and she still has those delicious rolls on her arms and legs. But she must have grown at least a teensy bit height-wise because now she can’t walk under the fridge door without bumping her head anymore.

Physical/Verbal/Cognitive Development
She’s running like crazy now and climbing onto things she didn’t used to be able to get up on — like the couch! She loves the slide at school and water play. And she is getting really good at climbing down the stairs — with help and supervision, of course. Fortunately, she does know to wait for one of us before going down the stairs, but it doesn’t mean I don’t panic every time she gets nears stairs of any kind!

Everyone said it would happen … the verbal flood gates would open and we’d have a total chatterbox on our hands. When we first heard “dada” at six months, I was convinced she’d be super-chatty from then on. But she wasn’t. While she babbled a ton, she surprised us by not being as verbal as I assumed she would be. Sure, she could follow instructions and understood cause and effect and the order of things we do and imitate gestures and sounds … but she wasn’t able to speak very much. Everyone said to be patient, so while it concerned me, I rode it out.

By the 15 month mark, she had begun saying a whole slew of words and animal sounds, and by 17 months was saying her first phrase: “Bye bye Mama” (or Rocco/dada/etc). Now, it’s like there is no stopping her!

This weekend alone, new words included “Zumba” (pronounced “boomba” — thanks to our sitter for teaching her that!), “up,” “down,” “rock,” “dirty,” and “stick.” She knows where to find trees and the moon and stars and kittens and knows the sounds her animals and toys make. When we ask her to find specific animals or things in her books she can, and she points to things she sees on TV or in magazines that she knows.

Her pronunciation isn’t always great, but we can understand what she means. (For example–“let’s go” doesn’t at all sound like “let’s go” — but she is repeating what Mickey says and doing the gesture he does when she says it; we know what she means). All dogs are “Rocco,” (pronounced “Cock-o”) and anything that looks like a horse — giraffe, alpaca — says “neigh” according to her.

She’s also started answering us with “Yeah!” or “Nay” for yes and no. It’s kind of ridiculous how cute she sounds — call me biased. What’s also ridiculously cute is how she gives her dolls or bears a cup to drink or pretends to feed them with a play spoon. I can’t wait for the days of dress-up to come!

She is still very into organization and tidiness and loves to put things away. Tonight she put her buggy in the garage in the right place when we got back from our family walk for the first time. Daddy was quite impressed 😉

Eating/Drinking Habits
There is nothing this child doesn’t like. She still loves her milk most of all — we’re down to 1% now —  but she loves to try whatever we are eating and recently ate salsa by the spoonful! She still uses a sippy cup but has successfully drank water and a taste of lemonade from a regular cup all by herself — before spilling at the very end of the cup. 😉 She will sometimes eat with her hands but prefers to use a spoon or fork, and if she dumps out her bowl or plate on her tray (typical toddler behavior), she’ll meticulously put each pea or carrot or noodle on her spoon. Which means mealtime can take forever … but it’s OK.

As I noted at Babble.com, she is an intuitive eater and that means she will eat slowly until satisfied. This weekend, I gave her Multi-grain Cheerios, half a banana and some milk in a bowl for the first time (I usually would give her the milk in a cup on the side). She rocked eating cereal in a bowl, and left a couple Cheerios in her bowl when she was done. Me? Ha — my bowl was empty, including the milk! I could learn a lot from watching her eat …

Sleeping
For the past few months, Maya’s bed-time has moved up from 7 to 8 p.m., all on her own accord. Yet some nights — like tonight — she was ready for bed at 7:30 so we started the routine and she was asleep by 10 to 8. She generally wakes around 7 — happy and chatting or playing with her animals. And her nap-time is generally 12-2/2:30. I know we have it good with her and am scared stiff for #2 someday because everyone I know with 2+ kids says #2 was the bad eater/sleeper/etc. Eeks!

Bath-Time … Changes!
We transitioned out of her blow-up ducky tub this month and now she takes her bath in the big-girl tub. She would only stand in it for the longest time (loving dumping water on her head or squatting to play with her boats and squirt-toys) but today I had on my swimsuit and went in there with her and all of a sudden she’d sit and play. Hmmmm!!

All in all, it’s been a fantastic month for sweet Maya and we look forward to what’s to come.