2018 ⮕ 2019
It's been a while! Stuff's been happening, but at any given moment, there isn't a whole lot to write about. In the words of one of our baby books:
In this phase of your child's life, they do everything they did three months ago—but better.
Olive does all the things she did three months ago, but better. She doesn't just walk: she charges forward1. She doesn't just say two words: she has a dozen or so. She still tries to climb on things, but now she sometimes succeeds without help. She doesn't just climb up stairs without assistance; she can now make it safely down also. She doesn't just bang toys around anymore, but sometimes cuddles stuffed animals and dolls. These are all definite improvements, and cool, but at the same time it never feels like there's a dramatic new ability that's been worth writing in particular about.
One recent development is that she's learned to recognize questions directed at her. She's super agreeable! Whenever Christina and I ask her "do you want to X" where X can be almost anything, chances are excellent that she'll respond "yeah2." It makes it hard to distinguish between the case where she actually understands the question and wants to proceed, and the case where she just trusts us implicitly. On the other hand, every once in a while we'll ask her a question in that form, and we'll know for sure that she understands, because when she knows that she doesn't want a course of action, she can be extremely clear about it!
Our current baby books mostly cut off at the second birthday, and we haven't really restocked with child-development books for two-through-four-year-olds yet. It was a lot more nerve-wracking, a lot easier to talk ourselves into buying baby books, before we'd actually met her. Still, we've done our share of reading ahead online and in the more wide-angle child-development books, and one thing that they generally agree on is that the developmental step which makes the twos terrible is the child's discovery that they have an independent will, that they can attempt to impose that will on the world, and sometimes succeed.
If that is true, then Olive has a head-start: she's already started making experimental forays into doing things her way, because that's the way she wants it. I suspect that a major reason she's still generally so willing to go along with what we want is that she can't verbalize the alternative to herself yet, let alone to us. If that suspicion is correct, then we'll see her drive for independence continue to grow proportionately with her vocabulary. Even if that's the case, though, and even if her twos are terrible, I still can't wait for her to start speaking. Christina and I talk to her all the time, of course, and it's clear that she understands more of it with every passing day, but it's going to be wonderful to hear her responses in her own words3, instead of pantomime.
One thing is certain: 2019 is going to be a very exciting year for us!
I'm not sure whether or not she can actually run and jump at this point. She can certainly pick up her pace and move with a purpose when she wants to, but it's pretty hard to distinguish between a fast walk, in which at least one foot remains on the ground at all times, and a beginner's run, when there is a brief interval in which she is in the air. Jumping is similar: she can definitely bounce, and I think I've seen her hop up off the ground a time or two, but it's not frequent or obvious enough to be certain.
Christina probably hears her saying "ja" in these cases. In point of fact, it very much seems like Olive's first language is turning out to be German: despite our speaking English at home, apparently the language of the outside world gets priority.
Technically she gives us responses in her own words already: she sometimes says things which are very definitely words, and repeats them as necessary, but they are words of her own invention. That is not what I'd meant by the phrase.