Oh, toddlerhood.
Lily is fully into the super demanding, tantrum-throwing phase. She's still not using any of her words around me or Husband, so she's all pointing and grunting all day long when she's not babbling. She gets super worn out at daycare so by the time we get her during the week pretty much all we see is a cranky baby. I love weekends so much.
We took her to the beach last weekend and she got to wear her new swimsuit for the first time. She played in the water with her new bucket and shovel and stared at some other kids as she is wont to do. She's now afraid of the sunscreen bottle because she always, without fail, manages to rub some of it into her eyes. I'm really careful not to get any on her eyelids or hands, but she will go ahead and rub her eyes with her arms and set off a vicious cycle of stinging and screaming. So we have to find a tear free baby sunscreen. There doesn't appear to be any EWG-friendly tear free versions out there so I guess I'm just going to have to suck it up and get some Coppertone or something. So all this sunscreen nonsense and the fact that this child absolutely refuses to wear a hat on her head is giving Mama an ulcer. Lily's so fair-skinned that I just can't stop worrying about her.
Which leads me to my next worry. Lily has been doing some repetitive motions lately that is causing some concern to my paranoid eye. She'll have a marker in one hand and the cap in the other. She'll put the marker and the cap together, then take them apart, and set the marker down. Then immediately pick the marker back up, put the cap on, take it off, set it down. Over and over. If I take the marker or cap away she'll absolutely freak out. She did the same kind of pick up, use, set down, pick up thing with a spoon yesterday.
I have OCD. I may joke about it sometimes, and my family may joke about it, but when the symptoms are bad it's completely not funny at all. So I'm a little hypersensitive about Lily maybe inheriting it. But I'm told that these repetitive motions are completely normal for a 14-month-old kid so I'm going to try not to worry about it and just bring it up with her doctor the next time we go in. I'm not worried about autism because she doesn't have any other symptoms.
One thing that's frustrating about Lily not being able or not being willing to use her words is that she'll get mad that we don't know what she wants and start hitting. Argh, I have a hitter. I've been gently taking her hand and saying, "we don't hit." What's more distressing is that sometimes when I take her hand she'll bend down and put her mouth on my hand like she's going to bite. She hasn't yet. It's like she catches herself and self-corrects. I can't help but flinch anyway. I'm sure that's not sending the right message either.
Miscellaneous crap pertaining to the in-between life of an in-between girl called PikaPikaChick.
6 comments:
this might seem like a crazy thought, but I'm going to throw it out there. Did this repetetive behavior stuff start around the time you started giving her cow's milk? I've read recently about kids on the autism spectrum, or even just with some symptoms but not enough to diagnose, improving dramatically when milk was taken out. It isn't necesarrily the lactose, but the casien, a protien found in cow milk. Knowing you have a hard time with milk products, it might be worth looking into. Also, yes toddlers do tend to exhibit a lot of repetative behaviors, and usually it is nothing to worry about.
Sorry for such a long comment, might have been better in an email.
Take care.
She's actually hardly had any cow milk at all. Maybe 2-3 cups total her entire life. I usually only have it in the house to make yogurt out of it and occasionally give small amounts to Lily if she's had one of her "I'm only going to eat two mouthfuls of anything" days.
The repetitive stuff started happening in the last week to week and a half.
I'd chalk it up to typical toddlerhood, then. Keep doing what you're doing, she's just fine.
Thanks. :)
One other thought, on language. Micahel waited a long time to talk, at least it felt long to me. He was about 2 years old before he started using words regularly. We signed a lot. He was able to get his point across fairly well without grunting too much. Some simple signs like milk, please, more, and some others that I've forgotten already. If nothing else, he was able to point and sign please, which I was much happier with than the pointing and grunting. There are probably some sign language for baby videos available through the library. Something to think about.
We'd love for her to sign more (currently she only uses "milk") but our daycare lady doesn't know how. We're really pushing "please" lately. Maybe she'll get it.
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