Jensyn – 19 & 20 months

You know what’s fun about Jensyn?  You just never know what each day is going to hold!This little sweetie keeps us on our toes!

A few weeks ago, we had my parents and niece over for dinner.  I had set all the plates, silverware, and napkins in a pile the middle of the table before they arrived.  I turned away for a few minutes, and I came back to Jensyn putting a plate by each chair. 

I helped her so that the glass plates wouldn’t end up in pieces on the floor.  Then all by herself, Jensyn gave everyone a fork.  (Mommy did the napkins.)  Jensyn was so proud of herself! We can put her in a dress, but it doesn’t make her act ladylike ;)  She LOVES to play in empty boxes!

Here’s the part that I am just LOVING…Jensyn has always liked to look at books, but now she LOVES for us to read to her.
 

She’ll run up to me, book in hand, and plop down in my lap.  After I’ve read the book, she’ll jump down, grab another book, and run back to me.  This could go on for 45 minutes straight.  When I stop reading to her, she’ll curl up with a book all by herself. 

In these pictures, I had just finished reading a big stack of board books with her.  She then plopped down on the floor, taking over a pile of cushions that her brothers had used to make a fort.

 

Her very favorite book is a board book of The Very Busy Spider by Eric Carle.  She also loves Big Dog, Little Dog by P.D. Eastman and Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Eric Carle.

Jensyn at 19/20 months…

• She’s a climber!  I don’t think there is anything in the house that is beyond her reach if she’s set her mind to getting there.
• She’s a busybody.  If she’s not sitting down with a book, she is MOVING.  She is always running around, climbing, jumping from the ottoman to the couch, chasing, going from one room to another.  She doesn’t like to sit still.
• She likes to color.  It doesn’t usually last long, but she enjoys a handful of crayons and a piece of paper.  I hope, being a girl, that she’ll actually take a real interest in coloring!
• She loves to walk around with a wet washcloth in her mouth.  I don’t know why.  This has gone on for at least 6 months now.  If I leave the kitchen washcloth on the table or near the edge of the counter, it’s almost a guarantee that it will end up in her mouth.
• We don’t give her a pacifier, but every once in a while, she will find one.  She LOVES to have one in her mouth.  Yesterday, she walked around with a pacifier in her mouth for hours.  She took a nap with it, too.  I just hid it at the end of the day.  I really should just throw it out.
• She has developed a sweet tooth.  Jensyn used to eat anything.  ANYTHING.  Now, thanks to her big brothers, she has discovered sugar.  Now, she’d like to eat candy, cookies, graham crackers…and mashed potatoes.  Sometimes it’s a real hassle  to get any quality food into her.  She does still happily eat ground beef and ham most of the time, but other than that, she would like to stick to sugar & carbs. 
• She is totally fascinated by the plastic drawer full of colored pencils in our school corner.  I really should just move the drawer to a new spot, as I find the colored pencils scattered all over the floor EVERY time Jensyn plays upstairs.  I found some coloring on the wall upstairs, and I think it’s probably Jensyn’s artwork.  Sigh.  (Thank you, Magic Eraser, for being so awesome!)
• She loves when we accidentally leave our bedroom door open.  She LOVES to dig through Mommy & Daddy’s nightstand drawers…or steal the box of Kleenex from my nightstand and pull out the tissues one by one.
• She absolutely adores having a “ditty” (pretty/bow) in her hair.  If I don’t give her one, she will ask for it.
• She can let out one really long, loud, high-pitched SHRIEK if she’s not getting her way.  Max hears it quite often.
• She loves to jabber, and her list of real words is growing.   She is trained now that she will NOT get out of her high chair until she says “all done”.    Word list:
  • “NOOOOOOOOOO!”  (wow, she’s good at this one!)
  • all done
  • mommy
  • daddy
  • dog-a
  • woof-woof (what does a dog say?)
  • moo (cows, sheep, and a few other animals in books say “moo” according to Jensyn)
  • ditty (pretty)
  • ditty (kitty)
  • meow (what does a kitty say?)
  • baby (baby dolls & pictures of babies)
  • bee-dy (birdy)
  • Meeeee? (please, while signing it)
  • bup (cup…and we have to “force” her to say it)
  • Hi
  • Bye Bye
  • Nigh-Nigh
  • poop
  • She will repeat a lot of words on command, like Mamma (grandma), Boppa (papa), other animal names/noises (tweet, tweet)
  • Last week, she walked into the bathroom and signed “potty” and said, “Mommy go botty!”
  • I know there are more words to add to this list…she’s starting to catch on in the past week or so, and the words are just pouring out!
• She loves going to nursery.  There’s no fear – just excitement over a room filled with fun toys and other little kids.  Whether we are at our own church or at Story Hour, she absolutely enjoys nursery!
• I “lose” her multiple times a day.  I try to keep doors shut so that at least I will find her in the main rooms of the house, but her brothers don’t always cooperate with that plan.  I never know where I will find her.    If it’s quiet for more than a minute or two, I know she’s in another room and getting into drawers/cabinets/mischief!
  
• She sleeps from 8ish PM – 8ish AM every night, and she rarely wakes in the night unless she is sick. 
• She is down to one nap a day.  Usually it’s a 2 – 3 hour afternoon nap, unless the brothers are noisy & wake her. 
• Daddy puts her to bed each night.  Mommy gives all 3 kids a bath and gets their jammies on.  Daddy and Mommy share toothbrush duties for the kids…which is Jensyn’s least favorite thing EVER.  She acts as if she is being tortured every night!  Then she gives Mommy hugs and kisses, runs to her bedroom, and waits for Daddy to read her a story and put her to bed.  I’ve never seen a child so happy to go to bed each night!
• She weighs 22 lbs.  My kids are pipsqueaks!
• She recently got over a terrible bout with croup.  It lasted 5 nights.  5 miserably long nights for all involved.  Poor baby was so sick!  We do NOT let our children sleep in Mommy & Daddy’s bed, but Jensyn got 3 nights in our bed because she was so sick and nothing else would help.  (It then took several nights to break her of that new habit.  Ugh!)
• Daddy just moved her carseat to face forward.  She’s pretty happy about that!  (Mommy, not so much, but Jensyn reached the weight limits on her seat & we had no choice.  Her seat (TrueFit) requires an additional headrest at 22 lbs, and the seat won’t fit rear-facing in any seat in our car with the added headrest.   I’m just grateful that she took this long to get to 22 lbs so that she could rear-face until almost 20 months.  So consider that your warning: read the carseat requirements VERY carefully before purchasing…it said rearfacing to 35 lbs, but I did not realize it required a very bulky additional headrest to make it that long!)
• She loves to stack her big Melissa & Doug blocks, put coins in her bank over & over again, carry around her baby doll, and look at books.  She doesn’t care too much for any other toys at our house.
• She loves our little resin statue of a sheltie dog.  (We have a sheltie, and Keith’s mom gave us this statue several years ago.)  Jensyn has claimed this statue as her own personal pet!

  

(I have a few more pictures to add, but we are in the process of switching over to a laptop, but the post is saved on the old computer…so, I’m going to post it from the ancient computer & add pictures from the new computer when I get a chance!)