Margot at 18 Months

There is one word that best describes Margot right now: sweet.  Plain and simple.  She’s happy, playful and curious and generally calm and even-keeled (much to her fathers' delight). 

She is just starting to use words.  But just barely.  She has “Papa” down for sure.  She is working on “Daddy” (at least that’s what I’m hearing) and “Coco.”  She is very focused on the word “diaper” for some reason.  Every night as I’m changing her before bedtime she practices the word.  She watches me say it – really intently watches me say it – and then tries really hard to say it herself.  She is using a few signs – “leche,” “more” and “all done.”  She is a terrific eater.  She’ll eat just about anything we put in front of her and goes to work on it as soon as it’s in front of her.  It’s like she knows she has a job to do and she gets it done.  She is not a terrific sleeper, however.  She’s not a bad sleeper, but she tends to cry a bit when put in her crib before naps and before bedtime.  And she’s always the first one done with her nap.  Bedtime stories are still a challenge, for me at least because I'm trying to read to Margot and Flynn at the same time.  Ken has much better luck holding their attention than I do.       

 

Margot is also remarkably helpful.  (I think I’ve mentioned this in a previous post.)  She actually picks up around the house.  She’ll pick up a kid’s jacket in one room and take it to the room where it belongs and even to the bin where we keep the jackets.  She’ll pick up shoes and bring them to whoever should be wearing them.  (She loves shoes, just like her big sister and her grandma Mary.)  She’ll even retrieve Flynn’s sippy cup wherever he might have left it and bring it to him.  Ken is thrilled at the prospect of having just one more person in the house who will help him pick up after the others in the house who will not be named but who tend to leave things lying around pretty much all day long.

The biggest surprise to me has been her independence.  When she was  an infant it seemed like she needed a lot more attention than Flynn.  Now, however, she is happy to play by herself and is nonplussed if you walk away and leave her alone to play.  A few weeks ago I was at the park with all three kids.  As soon as we arrived Margot walked past the toddler play structure – the one with shallow 3-inch steps and little plastic slides that are only three feet of actual slide – to the big kids play structure – the one for the over-two-years-old set with real steps, platforms that are six feet or more off the ground and a metal slide shaped like a spiral.  Margot climbed up those steps, walked across the platform and, at the top of the metal spiral slide, turned herself around, dropped down on her hands and knees and slid herself done that slide.  At the bottom she got herself off the slide by herself and came up for another turn.  And she did it again and again and again.  Flynn, on the other hand, was having none of it.