Charlotte is (well over) 23 months old now. Plans are under way for her second birthday, which feels like madness to me. I never wrote a 22-month update, so I’m going to kind of combine these months. It’s so long. I’m sorry!
Unfortunately, with the end of nursing came an increase in requests for a bottle. She’s been getting 2 four to six ounce bottles of whole milk a day since she was about a year old, and suddenly she was refusing to eat about 60% of the time and only wanted bottles of milk. Sometimes 5 a day. If she didn’t get them, it was absolutely the end of the world. It got rough. We switched to 2% milk hoping she wouldn’t like it as much. She loved it. I even started giving her half 2% and half water. She was totally willing to drink that. We knew it was time to put an end to it.
There were a lot of false starts where she’d go a day without one but then the next day she’d have 3. She’s finally reached a point where she will allow us to redirect her to a snack, and so far that’s been pretty successful. I am thrilled to report that we have been completely bottle free for TWO WEEKS now. After almost 2 years of bottle washing, I am fucking over the moon about this.
I want to make sure you’re all sitting down before I get to this next thing because it’s huge.
How many tears have I cried over Charlotte’s sleep since she was born? How many middle of the night breakdowns have I had over these 23 months? How many desperate pleas for sleep have I sent out to the universe? How many posts have I written about sleep?
This kid—MY KID—has slept through the night consistently for over three weeks.
I’m trying to find the words to say what this means to me, but nothing feels like enough. Take “grateful” and multiply the intensity times the light of a thousand suns. That’s how I feel these days.
We are officially without our nanny now. Catch is home for the summer, and Charlotte will start full time preschool/daycare in the fall. Closing that chapter on our childcare gave me all the feels. It felt like the end of something so important. I am so grateful to our nanny. She has been a gift.
Charlotte has had her two weeks at her new school, and she is having a blast. It’s just parent & me for now, so Catch is there with her, but now that school is in action we both have a bit more peace about our decision. I have no doubt that the full-time transition will be hard for her, but I think she’s in the right place and she is going to love it.
Her pediatrician has been after us to take her to the dentist since her 12-month exam, but we keep putting it off. I decided I didn’t want to hear it again at her 2-year visit, so Charlotte had her first visit with the dentist last week. I wasn’t there, but I got the report that her teeth are perfect and she was fully compliant with both the dentist and the hygienist. I am totally psyched that it went so well!
Developmentally, she’s doing so well. Growing in leaps and bounds. She never stops talking and singing. She repeats pretty much everything we say. She counts to 15, sings the entire alphabet, recognizes a handful of shapes, and can name pretty much any animal you put in front of her.
She loves to do somersaults and leg lifts. She “lifts” a little 2-lb hand weight like a boss—she lays on the floor, holds it with both hands and pushes it up from her chest while she counts her reps. It’s adorable.
Catch plays softball at her college alma mater once a week. Last week, I was walking around campus with Charlotte while Catch played and we encountered a woman working with her personal trainer on the grass in a quad area. Charlotte ran over to her and yelled, “Good job!” and then laid down on the grass next to her and started doing leg lifts and counting.
Fine motor is still a very weak area for her. She has improved some with utensils, but she’s still nowhere near as adept as her peers. She gets frustrated and often resorts to eating with her hands. Overall, I’d say she just seems awkward with her hands. Not much control. She still uses both hands interchangeably, although she has much better control with her left, so we find ourselves encouraging the fork or the paintbrush into her left hand.
At 23 months, her shins are black and blue and her knees are always scraped. She is fearless and clumsy and nothing slows her down.
You may remember that we stopped going to swim lessons a while back because she was so scared that she wouldn’t detach herself from us in the water. We started taking her to open swim time when the pool was quieter and she did much better. Now that summer is here, we’re spending pretty much every afternoon in my mom’s pool, and she’s making so much progress. She’s much more comfortable. We’re so happy to see her loving the water. That said, on Wednesdays they swim for a bit at school in the parent & me class, and Catch said she absolutely hated the group swim. Again, she wouldn’t let go of Catch. I’m hoping she’ll come around to it eventually.
Overall, this kid is just pure joy. She lights up whatever room she’s in. We are so lucky to be her moms.
