23 Months

Today Sabine turned 23 months old. She has also contracted her first cold of the season. There's been a lot of tissues and practicing nose-blowing around here, recently. But otherwise she's been perky. Sleep has definitely been better this month, and while not perfect, she's mostly sleeping through the night and able to get back to sleep fairly easily when she does wake up. She's also been going to bed later, closer to 8:00-8:30 most nights, but she has been sleeping past 6:00 in the morning as well, which we feel is a worthwhile trade-off!

Sabine has done a lot of reading this month, books have always been a favorite pastime, but she's definitely showing more and more interest in the ones with actual plots. She'll even read to her babies and bears (and Elmo) from time to time, reciting as much of a book as possible from memory.

We've managed to see cousin E at least once a week, and Sabine adores him. She talks about him all the time, and always asks to hold him when we're together. She's actually been quite gentle and caring towards him when we have put them together. It's heart-melting to watch.

Diet-wise, Sabine is a very picky eater these days. Cottage cheese and mac & cheese are our go-to foods, when all else fails. She does usually like zucchini, which is great because we've had lots of friends give us fresh ones from their gardens, so we've had a lot of zucchini this summer. Just this week, Sabine's become re-interested in oatmeal, or hot cereal, as she calls it. She's had it for both breakfast and lunch several days.

Her vocabulary continues to grow, and we've noticed her enunciation has gotten a lot better. Most strangers seem to be able to mostly understand her now. (That's if she opens up enough to talk, she's become more shy around strangers recently, especially if there's a large crowd. Usually with enough time she warms up and acts like everyone's old friends.) Sabine's also singing a lot, and likes to entertain us, especially at meals or in the cars. She's even started making up little songs, this morning she was singing about her friend S while we were in the shower. (Just S's name over and over.) It was really cute.

Dance classes have started again, and Sabine looks forward to them all week. She's gotten quite good at the welcome "Step and Curtsey" song, both singing and dancing.

To anyone we haven't told yet, we're planning on making this blog private once Sabine turns two. (Hard to believe that's coming up in just a month!) The plan is to make this blog password-accessible only, so that friends and family can still check it, but random strangers can't access it. We'll mention it again before we do it, and we'll send out a password in an email, but if you think we might miss you for some reason, please let us know! We're thrilled that so many friends and family have followed our adventures, and we don't want to lose any readers.