Beatrice turned twenty-two months on the 4th of February.
Her air-biting has diminished significantly in this past month. Maybe she’s not as angry at things as before. Maybe she figured out it wasn’t in her best interest to so freely express her aggression. In any case, she’s become more congenially willing to accept the word “no” as a possible response to any of her requests.
Of course, a real reason why this may have transpired could be the fact that she’s simply able to communicate more clearly, so when she asks for something I can actually understand and give her what she’s requesting. This month she was sitting on the kitchen counter while I was cooking, and she asked suddenly for her water bottle. Her delight both at being understood and being given the thing she asked for was clear.
She’s taken a real interest in numbers. Yesterday I caught her counting on her fingers, “eight, nine, ten!” with the correct number of fingers extended. She is generally present for a lot of math talk (now that Elvie is doing some bookwork, she and Anselm like to talk about number things) and so I assume Beatrice (as well as Eldore) has picked up from them that counting is very en vogue. She also recognizes some numbers, though just generally as “counting things” and not necessarily for the actual numerical values they represent.
She is still singing, all songs contorted into her own language. My favorite is still her rendition of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, which I believe I already described in her last update. (“Pinkle, pinkle, ee a-HA”) “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” is also a favorite of hers, as well as “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” and “Jingle Bells”. She also sings the songs we learn during school, and I hear her sometimes crooning the melody to “I Love the Holy Son of God” while playing or meandering through the house.
Her love of shoes continues with fervent abandon. Any person who comes to the house is in real danger of his or her shoes disappearing; they are spirited away by Beatrice’s feet, stubbornly shoved into them over her own shoes and shuffled off down the hallway to her room. Occasionally she gives herself away by crying that she can’t walk properly in her pilfered prize (they are, after all, only about twenty sizes too big) but the struggle doesn’t deter her from attempting again and again.
Her hair is so, so long. It’s time to cut those bangs again. I am dreading it. But there is no way to keep her hair back from her eyes, otherwise; any bow or clip remains for mere minutes before being ripped out.
She has found her spot on the kitchen counter. Now she and Eldore both perch there while I’m working in the kitchen. She is good at remembering not to bother the things on the shelves, and only sometimes sticks her fingers into whatever might fill any mixing bowls or plates up there. She comes running to me when she sees I’m busy in there: “Cowner? Cowner?” She points. Up she goes, and she sits with her signature grin of delight.
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