The Stephanie Newsletter #25

(September 27, 2000)

It's been so long since the last letter, I hardly know where to start. Stephanie's just short of two years old, and the pace of development has slowed down a bit. She's bigger, of course, and physically more capable. She's just tall enough to touch a doorknob now, although still too short to get a grasp on it. She may officially be a toddler, but she's walking, running, jumping, trotting, climbing, all those active things. She's still only about twenty pounds, which makes it easy to carry her when she's tired.

We're not letting her use the computer much now, but she's spending a lot more time at the TV, watching videos. I really didn't want to resort to this, but it's so seductively easy when you need a few minutes with your hands free. I assuage my guilt by remembering that we carefully select the programs she can watch, but I will have to be careful to cut back on my use of the electronic babysitter. Unfortunately, part of the reason I resort to it is that I'm too tired some evenings to do anything that requires either movement or conscious thought.

Her favorite videos have changed over the summer. While originally she would only request Blue's Clues, that shifted to Winnie the Pooh (any of our three videos would do), and now it's a toss-up between the Aristocats and Fantasia, particularly the Sorcerer's Apprentice segment. We fast forward through the scary parts, and it's surprising how many there are. While I thought Pooh would be completely harmless, there is a segment where Rabbit is lost in the forest that gets a little intense for her. The Aristocats is completely safe, and Fantasia has to be carefully watched and edited so that she doesn't see the scary bits, including the chopping up of the broom in the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Everything can be a fashion accessory!

We haven't exactly hit the "no" stage, although "not yet" and "I can't" is a common response to requests.

Another interesting development is that Steffi tells stories about Linda or me. For example, Linda will tell me that Stephanie will say that the cat woke her up from her nap, and then she'll say the cat woke up Daddy, too (even if I've been at the office all day). Or, I was carrying her in the backpack to the supermarket, and she was startled by a dog barking. She said she was scared, and then said "Momma scared too!" Linda says this is a way that Steffi is validating her feelings.

While Steffi is very talkative, it takes some interpretation to figure out her words. "Scared" and "Cold" sound awfully similar, especially since she'll shiver violently to illustrate either word. She's picked up some interesting phrases, many of them from her videos, we think. She says "Thanks!" a lot, which pleases us, and "Of course!" as a response to some questions. "Oh, no!" is always cute, too.

We're up to two, three, and four word sentences now, and her babbling is dropping in favor of words, or things that sound like words. Steph is also learning her letters, numbers, and colors. She knows many letters of the alphabet, although not in order, and knows a few numbers, too, although she isn't clear on their order sometimes. We're trying to teach her colors, too. "Green" is her first choice for most colors, but she can often handle red, blue, white, and orange. Yellow is a bit tricky, but once reminded, she's good with it for a while.

Steffi has grown fearful of many things. She doesn't like loud noises, like the neighbors next door running a blender, or a dog barking when we're outside. When strangers walk by, she buries her face in our legs, and asks to be picked up. The other evening when I walked her to the park in the dusk, the cars going by with their lights on frightened her, even though she loves seeing cars, and she relaxed the minute their headlights were past and the rest of the car could be seen.

Sure, I'm ready to nap. (NOT!)

Speaking of the playground, she's grown bored of the kiddie swings and likes to play on the more elaborate collection of slides, walkways, steps, and climbing stuff. I get nervous about her doing this with a mess of five-year olds and older swarming around her; I worry about her getting knocked over. It's much nicer in the late evening, when the playground is otherwise deserted, although it's pretty dark. I also worry about her picking up the four letter words the other kids routinely use, although it's certainly inevitable.

Sleep is less of a battle, but still a battle for naps, and I'm seeing new developments in bedtime. Just this week I've noticed she's likely to start screaming about ten minutes after being put to bed in the evening, even if she went to bed willingly enough.

Tonight she began to scream only a minute after I left the room. I went in, and she asked that the light be put on. I told her no, that it was time to sleep, and that was that. She flopped down on the mattress and curled up. It's been almost an hour, and I think we're in the clear for the night. Tomorrow will be another adventure.

She's also becoming more Mommy fixated. Although tonight was a special case (she had a very late, and too brief nap, and was just plain overtired when I got home), she was very insistent about asking for Momma, and getting distressed when I told her Linda was at work. That's new; hopefully it will be temporary.

Meals are much the same. We haven't introduced much in the way of new foods. She loves mushrooms, broccoli, noodles of most kinds, ramen noodle soup, pepperoni (the only part of pizza she'll eat), fruit, yogurt, and black olives. This week the favorite food is baby carrots. She'll sometimes eat cheese or cold-cuts like roast beef or turkey. Some days she refuses to eat just about anything. Thus far, we're not making a huge fuss over it. We try a variety of things to tempt her, and if she refuses it all, we let her go and figure she'll make it up on the next meal.

The other day, in the late afternoon, she asked me to make noodles for her after she skipped lunch. While Linda and I discussed the ramifications of going through the hassle to make her pasta for a snack, and whether we wanted to encourage her to request special meals, she went back to the TV, and that was the end of that. As it happens, we made ramen for her dinner, and she didn't have much of it anyway.

A short-lived development was Linda's temporary daycare arrangement, where we looked after the 14 month son of friends of ours during the day when their daycare arrangements fell through. Stephanie fell right into the role of older sister, alternating between sharing toys and mothering "Nicks" and getting jealous and snatching things away from him. On the whole, we think it was a positive experience.

A few of my favorite things!

This past summer we did an awful lot of travelling, although I've already lost track of some of the trips. Stephanie is a good traveller. We visited friends in a beach house on Rhode Island (I never saw the beach), and took her to Wellfleet, Cape Cod to see Grandma Hannah and Grandpa Seymour. She gets fussy on long rides, and generally won't stay put in her car seat for more than two hours if she's awake. (Linda doesn't blame her; two hours is a huge amount of time for a toddler.) We plan our driving around meals and naptime to maximize the distance we can go without long breaks. Linda says frequent overnights in different locations are probably the reason for her recent trouble sleeping.

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