With each passing month I find myself marveling over how much Levi has changed. One minute he’s got a vocabulary of 20 words — and the next he’s stringing words together to make a sentence! The other day he said to me: “close the door,” and then looked over at David and said “come, Daddy, please.”

I don’t know if it was something about the Canadian air, or simply his age, but Levi’s growth was exponential during our trip to Montreal at 20 months. Suddenly he seemed to understand everything we were saying and could even respond to some of our questions. He even learnt how to say please, which I’m quite proud of.

I was so nervous about flying solo with him since he literally doesn’t sit still, but thankfully the trip went really smoothly. I bought him his own seat and put him in his car seat. At first he protested, but once he understood he was stuck in there — he decided to make the best of it. It helped that I brought plenty of snacks he normally doesn’t get, and that the flight was during his nap time. He slept half the way and mama got to watch a little Runaway Bride. If you have a rambunctious toddler like me, I highly recommend strapping them into their car seat and not taking them out for the duration of the entire flight (provided it’s a short flight).

At 22 months, I love watching Levi learn new words and concepts daily, and boy oh boy have we had some epic laughs and cuddle sessions. He honestly cracks me up and is incredibly sweet with others. What I don’t love on the other hand are the constant battles. It. Is. Exhausting. Somedays Levi doesn’t want to wear a diaper; removes his shoes the second I put them on; throws his food on the floor after taking one sad bite of his homemade meal, and whines to go outside all day long. I have to literally wrestle him just to put his diaper on, or to get him to come inside. Why???? Apparently the simple answer is: because this is what toddlers do. Ugh.

I’ve been reading quite a bit about this age and one thing I learnt from 1,2,3 The Toddler Years by Irene Van Der Zande is to look at situations from the child’s perspective. When you think about it, grown ups are literally telling kids what to do all day long and the lack of autonomy must be really frustrating. Consequently, something I’ve been trying to do lately is giving Levi two simple choices. For example: do you want to wear the red shirt or the blue shirt today? Or, do you want to come inside for dinner now, or in two minutes from now? I’m providing him with two options I would be okay with, while also giving him a little control. I’ll let you know how it goes. The key is to remain calm at all times, which is obviously easier said than done.

The book I mentioned above opposes timeouts, but they’ve been working well for us so I’m sticking to them (I wrote about what we do here). After a few time outs, Levi has stopped climbing on the coffee table and trying to pull the moss off the walls. And when he does something he shouldn’t — like pouring water out of the tub — the simple threat of a timeout typically works to stop the unwanted behavior.

What I know for certain is every child is different and parenting is truly all about trial and error. There are moments/days with Levi that feel magical and blissful, and others that are pretty brutal. The highs are high and the lows are low with this age. That said, having Levi in preschool for half the day has been a big help. So, yeah, this is where we’re at right now. How are you doing? I would love to hear from you.

XOXO

Val