20 months!

My sweet angel-cupcake is getting bigger by the day - after wearing her 12-month clothes until she was about 17 months, she's suddenly stretching all the way to the very end of her 2T PJs.

She's starting to give us long descriptions of what's happening in the world around her, with pseudo-sentences instead of just single words. She also suddenly plunges into complicated narrations of events that happened days or weeks ago, so it always takes me a few seconds to catch up and figure out what she's talking about! For example, we went to visit a neighbor with a (very timid) cat a few weeks ago, and although Basbusa only saw the cat for about three seconds before it vanished under the bed, she has been talking about it ever since, at all kind of random intervals. It goes something like this (while gazing intently into your eyes to make sure you're following the communication): "Cat! ... Auntie Aisha... cat... Auntie Aisha carry cat... Cat in arms... Cat, meow, meow... Run! Run! Cat run! Cat afraid! Cat all gone! Basbusa saw cat..."

She also takes a few seconds to gather her thoughts as she adds more detail. For example, "Gloves!.... Black gloves... Auntie Nancy's black gloves... wears them... hands... Auntie Nancy wears them [on her] hands... outside... wears them outside..."

She's becoming so smart and helpful about remembering where things are and bringing me things I ask for! Yesterday my mobile rang while I was busy in the kitchen. I asked, "Basbusa, could you get me my phone, please?" and off she trotted to the bedroom, where she hunted around until she found the phone, and brought it to the kitchen for me. She also has a fantastic memory for where she left things. If I'm tidying up the bits of Baba's toolkit after she's been playing with it, and find a screwdriver missing, I can say, "Basbusa, do you remember where you left the screwdriver?" Even if it's fifteen minutes later, she'll stare at me with her head tilted slightly for a few seconds, and then trot off to fish it out from under a cushion on the sofa or between two books on the shelves. May this skill stick with her, insha'Allah! It often seems like one of the make-or-break criteria for being a successful Egyptian housewife is being able to Find Things, and I fail just lamentably at it. Basbusa seems to have inherited this one from two of her Baba's sisters, because she sure as heck didn't get it from me!

Talking of screwdrivers: there are very few things in the universe which are as fun as trying to unscrew things with Baba's screwdriver. And even fewer things cuter than watching her do it, masha'Allah :) My little engineer.

She takes such good care of her doll, reading books with her and holding the doll's hand to point to things in the books.

She adores cats, not that she's ever actually petted one.

She still follows me around all day with books for me to read to her.

She's getting a bit braver with physical activities like slides and jumping (she's not generally the world's most rough and tumble tot, so far). She's going up and down stairs with no help, and even lets go of the banister sometimes.

We're making progress with the potty training. It doesn't feel like tons of progress because she's still mostly dependent on me for reminders, but we don't have more than one or two misses per day.

She knows her colors, and adores pink, which she points out wherever she sees it. She hasn't gotten the hang of purple yet, but that's four syllables in Arabic, so I guess that's reasonable :) She knows ب, س, و, غ, ج, ق, ش and sometimes ك, ف and ت.

And, last milestone, she's finally weaned, about two weeks ago. She was totally ready - she was down to just once a day anyway - and she hasn't missed it at all. Sweet little munchkin. Nursing was all I hoped it would be.