20 Months

Twenty months?? That means only 4 months from now, my baby is going to be 2! *sniffle* We took Ally in for a check up and our lil peanut weighs 23lb 10 oz, which is in the 25th percentile, and measures 32 inches, which is in the 50th percentile. Her beautiful blond hair has grown quite a bit and I can't help but wrap my fingers up in her gorgeous curls. Ally's progress with her speech seems to have stalled again and she's relying almost entirely on gestures and sounds to communicate. She can say hi, bye, uh oh, nana (banana), and baby perfectly, but all her other words still sound like babble. Some new additions to her vocabulary are "wawa" for flower, "gogo" for sticker, clicking her tongue when she sees a bird, and gasping when she sees Barney. We love her toddler speak, but we've been working with her regularly to help bring her up to speed.
Despite our efforts, we just can't understand a majority of what Ally is trying to tell us, which leads to frustration for all of us. Her pediatrician has diagnosed her with an expressive speech delay and has recommended she have a formal speech evaluation. She's not very concerned, and neither are we, but we all think Ally might catch up a little faster with the help of speech therapy. For some reason, mealtime has become a challenge with Ally lately. She's becoming more and more picky, and she hates to have food she doesn't want sit on her plate, so the combination results in a huge mess. If she's in the mood for table manners, she'll eat an entire meal with her silverware and carefully wipe her face with a napkin. Unfortunately, she's not in the mood very often. Unlike her older sister, Ally is an avid climber. I joke that she is half billy goat because every time I turn around, I find her standing on the back or side of the couch, standing on the coffee table, standing on the top of Sophia's book shelf, or standing on my bedside table. It drives me nuts because #1. She's very accident prone and #2. It makes it very hard to keep things out of her reach. She loves to organize and pick up small objects, which would seem like a good trait, but she now purposely makes messes so she can clean them up. She'll dump over containers of crayons, markers, puzzle pieces, etc. If she were as good at cleaning up the messes as she was at making them, I wouldn't mind as much, but I guess practice makes perfect!

Fortunately for her, Ally is also one of the sweetest most lovable little girls ever created, which makes it very easy to forgive her and very hard to discipline her!