I keep having to remind myself that Hannah hasn’t already been two for a while. She’s been acting like such a two-year old for a few months now that it’s funny we’re just now celebrating her birthday. But, lo and behold, our girl is TWO!
Hannah’s 24-Month Stats:
- Weight: 26 pounds, 6 oz {88th percentile – as of 1/22}
- Length: 32 inches {60th percentile – as of 1/22}
- Clothing size: 2T – anything I buy now is 3T
- Shoe size: toddler size 6
- Number of teeth: 16
- Favorite foods: smoothies, pasta, cheese, watermelon, strawberries, crackers, cookies
- Least favorite foods: beef, chicken
- Favorite things/activities: reading books, playing anything with Ben, digging in the sand, climbing, swinging, watering, seeing animals, pouring water, and taking baths.
- Least favorite things/activities: waiting, not getting what she wants
As a two-year old, Hannah is nurturing, so loving, extremely strong-willed, chatty, sassy, opinionated, conscientious, athletic, observant, independent, loud, animated, bright, cuddly, so so happy and absolutely delightful. She has her own style and goodness sakes, she knows what she wants. Our little Hannie has quite the personality and I just can’t get enough of her.
Communication continues to be a major theme for Hannah. It’s hard to estimate her vocabulary because I’m positive she has more words than we realize. I’m thinking she’s approaching or exceeded 400 words.
The complexity of Hannah’s sentences blows Alex and me away. The other day she said, with tremendous animation, “There is an ant in the grass! They bite my feet!” She is putting together proper pronouns, subjects, prepositions, and building off of her basic vocabulary with all of those fun filler words. She can even identify a few different types of birds.
I’ve been mentioning for months that it’s very difficult to understand Hannah, especially out of context. I was concerned she would need speech therapy so we got a referral and ended up having a full developmental evaluation for Hannah yesterday. The gist of it is, in all areas, aside from fine motor skills, she’s developmentally aligned with a 35-38-month old. We always knew she was ahead of her age and it was so cool going through the assessment, realizing a lot of the things she can do are pretty advanced skills.
Regarding her speech, it turns out it’s on-par with her age, so that was great news! All of the areas we were concerned about are age appropriate. She has so much to say and is so bright I want everyone to be able to understand everything she says, so we’ll certainly keep monitoring and making sure she’s on-track.
A few fun/new things she’s said this last month:
- “I did it myself!”
- “Nope!” {favorite word, normally followed with a sly look and an eye roll.}
- “Mamaaaa! Where are youuuuu? I found you!”
- “I love you!” {she’s started saying this unprompted}
- “Excuse me!” she said after she sneezed and she says when someone’s in her way
- “I go to school!”
- “Mama, hold me like a baby?”
Lately Hannah’s relationship with her blanket and her babies has been developing in the sweetest way. She has such a natural maternal instinct and I’ll often catch her brushing her baby’s teeth, sharing a bite of food with her baby or taking her baby potty. She loves to cover up her baby with her special blanket and she often wants her blanket with her. For months and months she’s wanted her blanket to be laid out on the floor for her to sit on.
Hannah and Ben’s relationship has also transformed quite a lot in the last month or so. It’s certainly been evolving for a while, but these two are turning into the best pals. On occasion they’ll hold hands and walk through the field or forest together. Ben is usually the leader and Hannah is so pleased to be included in his creative play.
Riding her bike or scooter continues to be one of Hannah’s favorite activities. She just loves it and my goodness she is really getting the hang of it. It is so fun going out to the street to take a little spin with the kids.
Our girl is a natural dancer. She definitely got that from Alex. She waltzes around on her tippy toes like a ballerina, perfectly and so naturally does Alex’s “spaghetti arms” move and just generally moves to the beat of the music so fluidly. This girl has got moves. I so wish I could put her in a dance class right now – she would absolutely love it. I’m going to try to find something on YouTube in the interim.
Hannah is always there to lend a helping hand. From a very early age she has been terrific at sharing with Ben – that has only gotten even sweeter. She is quick to share her food with others, “dada, want a taste?” as she holds up a bite of her food. The other day Ben was asking for more of something and she started scooping up her food and putting it on her plate to share with him. She loves to clear her plate and even put things into the dishwasher. Cleaning up toys is usually an enjoyable task for her and she always sings the “clean up” song.
This girl keeps us on our toes, usually in the best way possible. She is just an absolute delight and I cannot get enough of her. We are absolutely smitten with our Hannie and are so, so very excited to continue to watch her grow and thrive as a two-year old! And now that she’s two, I’ll switch to quarterly update posts like I do with Ben.
