Just Jett: Nineteen Months

Happy Birthday, Jett! You are days past your nineteen month birthday.

What can I say? This has been an exhausting month. You've had a runny nose and cough for every single day of your eighteenth month, and it hasn't stopped yet. You wake up at night coughing, so we wake up to listen to you cough. You've developed a gorgeous habit of wiping your nose with your finger even when it doesn't need wiping. It's like you've forgotten what a nose feels like without snot running down it, so you think every nose sensation, or non-sensation, is by default, the sensation of running snot. On the upside, you now blow your own nose and throw away the used tissue when you are finished.

Look at those watery eyes and that 'already been wiped a million times today' nose.

We've also had a lovely encounter with the word "no". Before you turned nineteen months you rarely said "no". Instead, you simply shook your head from side to side, and honestly, no matter how vehemently you would shake your head, the effect was quite charming. But somehow the actual word "no" entered your vocabulary this month and now we hear it one hundred and ninety two times a day. I have to admit though, you don't always say it with a grump. Sometimes you actually stop to consider my proposal, and end with an "mmmmm-no". Sometimes you think I must be joking, and you pshaw me with a laughing no. Sometimes you say "no" in the same friendly tone of voice I use the greet our faithful mailman. But no matter how you say it, you mean it, and you aren't budging.

Cousins Megan and Justin

Actually, sometimes you do budge, and those are miraculous moments of victory for me. For example, today I told you to put the broom away, and you said, "No". We faced each other like a duel - hands on hips, broom in your hand (nothing in my hand except my surrender, which I was about to reveal) - when suddenly you turned around and walked the broom to the closet, like it was your idea all along.

Things like that happen on my days of great patience. Thankfully I have a lot of days of great patience - but probably because four days of the week we pay your nanny for her patience.

But oh, the sweet dependability of you. Every time you finish a meal and I lift you out of your highchair, you give me a kiss. At night you cry for exactly two minutes before falling asleep. You wear your MPJ (what everyone else would call a "blankie") around your neck like a boxer so you can carry it with you while your hands stay free. You ask me to turn on the CD player during every meal. And every time we walk down the three flights of stairs to the front door of our building, you count the steps ("Two, two, two, two, two).