Letter to Greta: 16 Months

Dear Little Miss,

What a little person you are now, and what a lot of naughtiness you’re discovering. You have discovered that “no” exists for you as well as your sister, and you have discovered your ability to defy that “no” and keep doing what you want. You like to stand up in your high chair. You like to rattle the cabinet doors under the kitchen sink. You like to stand up on a chair at the little table. You like to stand on the bottom step and rattle the baby gate. You like to turn your milk bottle upside down and shake drops of milk everywhere. The list goes on.

You are very unlike Lucia right now. You are unafraid of strangers, for the most part; today I took you both to Whole Foods for a story and craft hour, and you kept running off, approaching strangers, climbing onto a motorized handicap cart. Lucia was immersed in adding glitter to her construction-paper snake, and you kept reaching onto the table and grabbing anything within reach; all the kids there seemed to have glitter on their tables, but you and Lucia were absolutely covered in glitter. It was a little insane.

You love your Bibi and are rarely without it. You like to carry around other things as well, particularly your corduroy cat and puppy. You like to press your animals into our faces for us to snuggle and kiss; you, too, snuggle them to your chest with the snuggle-snuggle-snuggle motion I so love in a baby. You use a pacifier but don’t seem totally obsessed; if it’s in sight, you want it, but you spend much of the day without it.

Though you didn’t like the snow, on the rare afternoon when we’re able to go outside for a little while, you love it. You usually throw a fit when it’s time to come inside, and you carry your shoes around, wailing “Shoe…shoe…shoe…” because you want to put them back on. You also pound on the front door yelling “Side! Side! Side!” We’re all ready for spring.

You are still heartbreakingly too little to do some things, like run close to the water when we go to the duckpond to feed the ducks. Lucia bounds around, tossing bread, while you watch everything from your stroller, yelling “Quack! Quack! Quack!” at the ducks. You want so much to join in.

You’re learning new words almost every day. Some new ones are fuh-fuh (woof-woof), meow, moo, seat, and read. You're also getting much better at running, thanks in part to the new rec room in the basement.

You’re still taking two naps, an hour or so in the morning and about an hour and a half in the afternoon. You’ve been doing okay with your nighttime sleep, but we’ve had a couple of 5 o’clock wakeups that are just brutal (the difference between anything before and after 6:00am seems more pronounced than it should be). Three days ago we finally put Lucia’s crib in your room. You’d still been sleeping in the mini-crib and were getting far too big—and you were able to swing your leg over the side. Now you’re in a real crib, and you seem to love it.

You are definitely the high-maintenance kid these days, especially with some teething going on, but we’ll keep you anyway. Even when you wallop our heads with your hands screaming “Hair! Hair!” or poke at our teeth and eyes with your tiny fingers.

Favorite toys/activities: ball popper, Squinkies, felt sandwich set, stacking cups, Sit N’ Spin, chalk, play food, Lucia's Dolly, running around the rec room (as in the pictures above)

Favorite books: Mouse Paint, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Duck & Goose A Book of Opposites, Birthday Monsters, Where Is Coco Going?