22 Months & A Morning Routine

The Lone Star Baby turned 22 months old yesterday. It is hard to believe that she is almost two!

She has a morning routine at school now. We drop her sister off at school first at 7:30am and then head on to her school where Buenos Dias care starts at 7:45am. We go in and hang up her backpack and she hides her face on me while the teacher tries to tell her Buenos Dias. We take the Lone Star Baby's breakfast over to a certain table and she sits in a certain chair while I lay out her napkin and spoon, her yogurt, her sippy cup of milk and her "fruit bar" (one of those cereal bars). She sits in the chair while I open the fruit bar and yogurt and stir her yogurt. She used to wail Sit! sit! at me over and over every morning to get me to stay with her and it was very heartbreaking...but she has gotten over that now. Sometimes, when she is having a particularly hard morning, she will whisper sit at me and that is just as heartbreaking as the wailing, maybe more so, but mostly she is okay. (Deep breath.) I give her a few kisses and tell her that I love her and will see her later and then I go. Recently, she has added opening her yogurt all by herself to her routine and is very proud of herself although she still wants me to stir the yogurt as, I think, a nod to still being the center of my universe.

Day before yesterday, the Lone Star Baby's routine hit a bit of a snag. When we got to school, one of her little friends was sitting in the chair she always sits in for breakfast. I thought we were in for an immediate meltdown, but she let me lead her to another chair and lay out her breakfast. It was only when it was the time in her routine for sitting down that she started pointing at her friend and fussing eso chair, eso chair!. She never really melted down - I was quite impressed. The Lone Star Baby will probably never be exactly easy-going but she is learning, bit by bit, to modulate the intensity of her reactions somewhat. I wish she had more time and space for this work, but she is doing alright.