Hug Twice

I just love this age.  Well, I love any age.  But still.

Alexa has taken to yelling what i can only surmise to be “Hug!” and then running full-tilt into our legs (or, just running into CJ) and grabbing us as hard as she can.   It sounds like she is yelling “Ha!” but I think it is hug. 
It is so cute and it just makes my heart melt.  I love this age.

She is exactly the right height to headbutt Matt in a delicate area.  I don’t think he’s quite as amused by it.

This morning CJ tried to explain to Alexa that he did not want to hug right now.  So instead, she knocked him over. 

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Alexa has a cold, and yesterday developed the barking cough I know all too well as croup.  She was sleeping upstairs in her crib when CJ got home from school, and I had the monitor on downstairs so I could hear her if she needed me.  As CJ and I played, every so often, we would hear a cough over the monitor.

And every time, CJ would ask me where the dog was.

I finally convinced him the noise was Alexa barking, not a dog.  So CJ happily exclaimed “Alexa is a dog!”

He seemed happy about this development.

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Yesterday we went to the zoo.  I was still getting ready when Alexa woke up from her nap, so I asked Matt to get her dressed.  It has just started to be springlike here, so she hasn’t worn many of her spring/fall clothes since last fall, and I am not sure which fit and which don’t.  I handed Matt an outfit and told him if that didn’t fit, to let me know and I would pick out something else.  I didn’t hear anything else, so I assumed it fit.

Well, Matt put the kids in the car while I packed up the camera and snacks, so I hadn’t really gotten a look at Alexa since she was dressed (and it didn’t occur to me I needed to).  We drove to the zoo, and Matt put Alexa into the stroller.  At this point, I got a look at her.  And, well… her pants didn’t quite clear her ankles, and the hoodie was like a half-shirt.  Luckily, the onesie underneath covered her tummy, but still.  I tried to pull the pants down her legs, hoping it was how she was sitting in the stroller, but no luck.

I turned to Matt and said “I thought you said this fit?”.  He looked at me, and said “Well, I finally managed to button the onesie, so I thought it did!“.

Well, okay then.  Only a daddy, I guess. 

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Honestly, I blame Matt.  Basically, he is like a vampire and sleeps hardly at all.  And somehow, he seems to be okay with it.  I am a night owl, if given the choice, but I need my sleep.  I get to a point where I can’t function any longer without some good solid sleep.

No, wait… I just described my son.  So I guess he does take after me after all.

CJ, for the first 2.5 years of his life, was not a model sleeper.  Or, much of a sleeper at all.  He wanted to stay up all night and party.  And often, he did, despite many parental protests.  But at some point during my pregnancy with Alexa, we turned a corner.  And suddenly, he would go to sleep at a reasonable hour, and sleep all the way through the night to the next morning.

And if I wasn’t so tired from being woken up every hour by a baby kicking me from the inside, I would have thrown a party.

Now, CJ is still a great sleeper, but we, Matt and I, aren’t adapting well enough.  Since I work in the evening at taekwondo, it seems like we never get everything together and organized and really get him to bed as early as we should.  Nine somehow becomes 9:30 becomes 10pm, and CJ needs more sleep than that.  So sometimes, he just crashes on the couch at some very early hour, like 7:30 pm last night.  Boom, he was asleep.

We need to work harder to get him into bed at a reasonable hour.  If the youngest was as cooperative as her brother, I suspect that would be easier.  But still, we shall try.

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In the next 6 months, Alexa should go from having 5-10 words to having 50-75.  And if I tried to say I’m not a little worried, I’d be lying.  CJ was always “behind” in speech - zero words at 12 months, maybe 2 words at 18 months, and 24-30 words at 24 months (and I was being generous at what I considered a word).  Alexa has been basically on target so far, but definitely in the “average” range of 2-3 words at 12 months and about 5-10 words now, depending on how liberal I am with the idea of a “word”.

She’s 18 months old, and it seems a LONG way to 75 words.  A long way.  I don’t want to make the same mistake I made with CJ and think that what’s going on is normal, but at the same time, I don’t want to be reactive and over-anxious about it all.

6 months is a long time in the life of a toddler.  I just have to keep telling myself that.  Deep breaths.  I think I am having some sort of reaction to CJ’s case conference still.   And if she’s not talking too much at 24 months, it isn’t the end of the world.  Speech therapy is fun, right?  CJ certainly thinks so, at least.

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