20 Months Old and Counting!

Kirsten is 20 months old, ever since January 13'th! She's getting ever so close to the terrible 2's, and is definitely getting more opinionated and independent every day. It's a good thing she's so cute!

New challenges:
-Sleeping at night. She has been such a great night-time sleeper for the longest time, and she used to enjoy going to bed at night. For the past week and a half, she's suddenly decided that she hates it or she's scared or something (I wish she could tell us what it was!!!), because she suddenly cries and screams every night when we put her down for bed. She'll scream out "Daddy daddy daddy!" and get herself into a huge fit until Stephen goes and gets her, rocks her for a few minutes to calm her down, and then takes her back to bed. Sometimes he has to do this more than once before she'll calm down enough to go to sleep. A couple of nights she even woke up doing this in the middle of the night too. Why??? She goes down just fine for naps and doesn't cry at all, so I doubt it's an issue with her crib or being sick. She only does it at night! I'd love to hear any advice about this, because it's driving us wild!

-She constantly wants to go places and explore, which would be fine in nice weather but it's a little tough when it's January in Seattle and you don't even have a backyard to play in. She loves to take my hand, say "Go go go!", and pull me along behind her to wherever she wants to go, usually the kitchen counter so she can sit on it and play with stuff.

-She's very clingy lately and afraid of being around kids her age or younger. That means she freaks out during nursery and will only play at an indoor playground if I follow her around everywhere (with her clinging to my hand too) and make sure other babies don't come up and touch her. I don't know why she has this fear, but she cries all the time when she's around little kids she doesn't know.

New words she can say:
(Her vocabulary is increasing quite a bit, which is lots of fun, and here are some of her new favorite words)-
*Apple
*Cracker
*Oranges (sounds like "Oh-she's." Her favorite food right now!)
*Berries ("B.B.'s")
*Beans
*Cup
*All Through! (when she's done eating she says this now)
*Elmo
*Ernie
*Blue's Clues
*Lucy (yep, from I Love Lucy. She says it when the show comes on!)
*Shoe
*Horsie
*Butterfly
*Awesome

Things she loves to do:
-Climb up and down stairs or pretty much anything else for fun
-Play outside
-Put on hats, animal ears, sunglasses, or anything else that goes on her head
-Go for rides in the car, as long as they're not too long
-Go down slides (and climb up them too, of course)
-Be chased, play hide and seek, play peek-a-boo

She's a really snuggly and sweet girl, most of the time, and we are so blessed to have her! I just hope she starts to like sleeping at night again very soon!!!