Becky and Jared's Blog

Sarah is 22 months old.

This month Sarah has really shown her interest in new things. I have been letting her choose between 2 outfits to wear in the morning and she loves to make decisions. She takes the choice very seriously, looking over each outfit several times before coming to a decision. The best part is that she is more willing to get dressed if she decides which outfit to wear. Of course, there are always the days she says no to both outfits.

Sarah has her favorites. For breakfast Sarah’s favorite is cereal, preferably fruit loops; Cherrrios and Lucky Charms are good too. She loves apple juice, of which she drinks way too much. She also likes ham, cheese, and yogurt for snacks. Sarah loves most every fruit, especially bananas, strawberries, grapes, and kiwi. Of course like all kids, candy and chocolate of all kinds are her ultimate love.

Loves Ice Cream

Sarah’s favorite toy is her baby dolls. She plays with them everyday. Her favorite thing to do is wrap them in blankets. The blankets are usually dish towels or way too many wipes. (We go through a lot of wipes these days). Sarah also likes her new mega blocks that she got this month.

Sarah loves all weather. She loved walking in the snow. We had a really mild winter but when it did snow she would go out of the way to walk in it. Rain is another big love and enjoys running through puddles. Sarah loves the sun as well and has loved going to the park in the nice weather. Well, at least she will enjoy every season she has.

Speaking of parks. Sarah has really become more adventurous this last month. Since the weather has been nice she has been at the playground a lot more and been able to play on Grandma-’Rina’s playground. Sarah has learned to climb a ladder this month all by herself. She can also climb the whole playground toy to get to the slide and then go down the slide all by herself. Her all time favorite is the swing. What’s interesting is at early spring we put her on the swing and she hated it. She went full circle. Now she will get on the swing and stay almost a half an hour. She likes the toddler swings because she can go higher, but is not afraid of the regular swings either. With the baby/toddler swings it usually goes like this I say, “ready”, Sarah, “ready”, Me: “Set, Sarah: “Set”, Me, “GO!”, then we do a underdog push. Sarah loves this and laughs really hard. She will even start the ready, set, go herself.

Sarah climbing the ladder

Getting Started

Half way there

Getting Higher

Sarah loves to clean up. True Story: Sarah got in the cupboard and then spilt a bunch of rice on the floor. I mentioned something about the mess (not anything about cleaning up). Sarah goes straight to our utility closet and got out our electric sweeper and started cleaning up the rice, all by herself with virtually no prompting. Another day I was disinfecting her toys and she wanted her own wipe to help. I gave her a wipe and she started wiping down her toys as well. Don’t get me wrong though, as much as Sarah likes cleaning up messes she likes making them as well. She has started playing with her food more and throwing her food on the ground more. Sometimes she will even make a mess to clean it up. Unfortunately, being a toddler she doesn’t usually clean up the whole mess and mom and dad need come to the rescue.

We tried painting for the first time this month. She liked it for maybe 5 minutes. Luckily it was enough time to snap some pictures. Sarah isn’t big into coloring. It will only hold her attention for a few minutes if not seconds.

When Sarah grows up she wants to be a hair dresser. Sarah loves to comb and brush hair. I try to get her to brush Daddy’s hair but she always wants to brush Mommy’s hair especially when Mommy mostly wears her hair up. Sarah is getting more gentle about brushing other people’s hair.

Sarah’s getting smart. She won’t show off her knowledge on demand but she will surprise us with her talents. Sarah knows a lot of songs and will sing with you and do the hand motions. She will never sing the whole song from beginning to end but will sing parts with you. These songs include but are not limited to: Popcorn popping on the apricot tree, The wheels on the bus, patty-cake, I love to see the temple, ring around the rosie, and so on. She was even singing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during General Conference a little bit. I have also caught her singing to her baby dolls. It is so sweet. Sarah also has memorized the ends of lots of rhymes and books. She can say the last word to every phrase of “One, Two, buckle my shoe”, Clifford’s Peekaboo, and, Peek-A-Who. She sometimes surprises me with what she knows. The other day she started counting. She knows at least what the numbers and colors are but definitely needs some fine tuning.

Sarah is a smart, sweet, energetic toddler and getting more independent everyday.

In February…

We went bowling with Sarah. Sarah had her own frames to bowl. She had a lot of fun. We used the ramp most of the time but towards the end she wanted to roll the ball down like Mamma and Daddy. She also insisted on carrying her bowling ball herself. It was really cute because she cheered every time she bowled and she cheered for Mamma and Daddy.

We played some Mommy/Daughter, Daddy/Daughter football. Sarah is the quarterback and will say, “hike” then we will say, “touchdown” when she throws the ball.

Sarah loves to wear her mommy’s shoes. It makes me wish I had cuter heels to leave laying around. But in the lack of heels she gets my running shoes.

We got a practice potty for Sarah. It is probably a little early but we thought it would be good so she at least can sit on it when she wants to. She is also in a taking off pants and diaper stage so I figured we could at least set her on the potty when she strips. Sarah loved getting her new potty as you can see from the pictures. We, her parents, are still deciding whether it is a good idea or not since she is spending considerable more time on the potty.

Sarah loves her cousin Jocey. My sister-in-law Starrie watches Sarah 4 days a week while I am at work and Jared at school, so they have a lot of play time together. Sarah is consistently asking for Jocey.

Sarah is becoming a better helper. She will put things away when I tell her (only one thing at a time). If she spills something I can hand her a washcloth or paper towel and she will at least attempt to wipe it up. Here is her “helping” with dishes. Which really amounts to playing with the dish water while I do dishes. At least I get the dishes done. If you look closely you can tell that she is very wet.

Do you have an active toddler? Sarah is so active it really is hard to take her to places like church or sit down to eat out. She is constantly trying to get away. If we are out and about she definitely does not want to sit still. She doesn’t like to color for more then a minute, books don’t last with the temptations of being away from home. Most quiet activities are designed for older children not 21 month olds. If I do say no she can’t go she screams and disrupts church. Anyone have ideas on keeping your child still, especially at church?

Getting packages in the mail is extra fun with a toddler. Sarah is not afraid of loud sounds.

Sarah still had her ear infection when she went to the doctor. She is now on her third medicine for it. She usually hates going to the doctor but this time she was having a lot of fun exploring the room. It is a good thing Sarah likes medicine because she has had to have a lot of it this last few weeks. I think the third time did the trick because Sarah finally stopped having a running nose (had it for 6 weeks or more) and seems to be feeling fine.

I took Sarah to Jump On It. She likes to jump but is still getting the concept of taking both feet off the ground. She did a little better at Jump On It. Unfortunately the thing that she really wanted to do was the only thing that cost additionally money, the kiddie carousel. I took her on 2 rides and because she stayed on it so much two other people let her ride with their kids. We had a lot of fun and Sarah was sad to go. The video doesn’t quite capture how much she loved it but the picture shows a lot more.

Sarah has had a new obsession. She loves to watch Tangled on the iPad. She will constantly switch the chapters and has started quoting it. She is now moving on to Up and Monsters Inc. She loves the balloons in Up and just plain loves Monsters Inc.

When we went to Grandma’s and she saw the crown she put it on. It was super cute. I may just have a girly girl on my hands.