Violet at 19 months

It's funny how much littler our younger children look to us than our older ones did at the same age. Violet is 19 months old now. We just had a playdate with a friend I met at the breastfeeding support group I attended with Jack. Her oldest is three weeks older than Jack, and Violet is now the same age this boy was when his sister was born. At the time, this boy had just started speaking in sentences. I remember thinking then that he spoke really well, but it wasn't that big a deal. He didn't seem that little to me.

Fast forward to today. Violet still very much looks like a baby to me. People tell me all the time how well she speaks. And she does have a lot of words, but she at most will string two words together (usually "Want [something].") It's funny how having a bigger child around alters our perspective on our younger ones.

Violet seems to have calmed down a little after all the 18-month drama. It's nice to have my sweet baby back. She still likes to scream when she's upset or wants something, but her tantrums are usually relatively short lived and thankfully infrequent. I am definitely a lot firmer with her than I was with Jack at this same age. As soon as she starts throwing a fit, I count "1...2...3," and if she doesn't stop, I bring her up to her crib. I keep her there until she stops crying. Typically, she'll start calling, "Mom-mom! Mama!" when her tantrum is over. And now, when she sees me walk into the room to rescue her from her timeout, she knows to tell me, "Sorry! Sorry!"

She will also say "sorry" immediately after she does something she knows I don't like. So she will often scream about something and then automatically say "Sorry!" for screaming. She's developed the regrettable habit of swatting at me when I tell her something she doesn't want to hear (like "no" when she wants to nurse or watch a video). But she swats and immediately says, "Sorry!" She now understands the concept of timeout, and whenever she even hears the word, she will walk over to a timeout spot - even if she hasn't really even done anything. This morning, she did something to make Jack mad, and he told her, "You go in timeout!" And she walked herself over to stand up against a wall.

This is all such a far cry from what Jack was like at this age. It took a long time to train him that he is not supposed to just walk off when he's in timeout. Same thing with diaper changes. I used to have to wrestle with Jack to get him to lay down for them. Violet will very often be the one to tell me when she wants her diaper changed and then she will voluntarily lay down on the ground to let me do it. I thought that was something that only happened with Other People's Children.

She has also given in on the whole not saying "please" to nurse thing she was doing last month. Now, she will very nicely say or sign "please" if she wants "numi numi," as she still calls it. Sometimes I am not completely sure that she knows the difference between "please" and "sorry." The signs are remarkably similar (you circle a flat hand on your chest for "please" and a fist for "sorry"), and she often verbalizes them interchangeably. But a lot of times when she says "sorry," she'll just keep repeating it over and over again. It exasperates Jack to no end. I don't know if it's because it's a word that she pronounces really well so she likes hearing herself say it or what the deal is, but usually the only way to get her to stop is if I tell her "thank you." And then she'll usually say "thank you" back to me.

She is still going strong with the nursing. I recently read this article about nursing toddlers that is a really good summation of how I feel about it.

She is proving to be very resilient. The other day, we were at a playground and she underestimated how high the drop-off from the play structure was. I think she thought she'd be able to just slide down backward like she does off the couch, but the landing she was on was about three feet off the ground. She ended up falling a little ways and landed on her back. It looked much scarier than it apparently really was, because she just lay on her back and looked a little bewildered. But she didn't cry at all. Jack to this day will still often cry like it's the end of the world if he falls off something even half as high up.

The other difference, though, is that she rarely does hurt herself anyway. It seemed like Jack had a permanent goose egg on his forehead when he was just starting to walk, but Violet is pretty careful and well-coordinated. She also doesn't bang her head on hard surfaces when she's upset the way that Jack did. Thank goodness.

Our mornings are usually very sweet, once I get over the fact that she is indeed awake, which means that I have to wake up as well. Often her first words of the day are, "Mommy! Want Jack-Jack!" When Jack hears her, he usually comes into the room to say good morning. Today, for the first time, she said, "Morning!" back to him. And Jack typically climbs into the bed with us and tells us both how much he loves us. It's not a bad way to start the day. (If only it were a little later...)