Your baby, 24 months 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 and older

By this time, you and your child have established routines and bedtime should be an important time during the day for both you and your child. Bedtime is a great time to provide one on one, uninterrupted time to listen to your child and talk about their day. Establishing this as a nightly routine, your soothing voice will help your child get snuggled in and rest easily. You also are setting the stage for years to come, when your child wants to talk to you privately.

It is not unlikely to have noticed some changes in your child's appetite. One day she seems like she is starving and other days she hardly eats anything at all. Your toddler may also have distinct favorites. Although it is okay to continue to serve your child her favorite foods, remember to provide a vareity of healthy foods. Offer new foods frequently and although she may reject them at first, continue serving them to her. Eventually, she will try them and possibly surprise herself with a new favorite! Just because your child has rejected the food, does not mean she does not like it. Toddlers are often scared to try new foods. Do not make a fuss if she does not eat it, just serve it again. Always offer your child the same foods that the rest of the family is eating and avoid serving different meals.

Your curious toddler may be wondering about sex at this point. Although he does not need to know the details, it is okay to answer her questions about where babies come from and differences in girls and boys. You could tell your child that babies grow in a special place in a mommy's tummy. You may choose to tell your toddler that babies get here from both the mommy and daddy. Most of the time, your child will only ask a few questions and then their curiosity will be satisfied. Talking to your child now about these inevitable questions will make it easier for more in-depth questions later on. Teach your child the names of his/her genitals as you teach the rest of the body parts names. Do not worry if you find your child handling their genitals. It is normal for children to explore all of their body parts, genitals included, and they are finding out that it feels good. Try not to make your child feel `naughty` about this and possibly encourage them to explore in a private area-such as the bathroom or their bedroom.

Two year olds often bite, hit, pinch and kick other people. Most children will bite, hit, kick or pinch when they are angry or frustrated. When your toddler does this, tell her firmly, `No biting. Biting hurts.` Pull your child aside and explain to her that what she did hurts and that is is unacceptable. Never bite, hit, kick or pinch your child back. This will not stop the problem and it may teach your child that it is okay.

Talk with your child, rather than at him. He can understand what you say and most of the time will have interesting things to say back to you. Try to encourage your child to talk by using open-ended questions that he can comment on. Tell your child that what he said was interesting, funny or neat. Let him know that you value his opinions and thoughts.

Developmental Milestones - 24 Months Old



Physical

• Tries to catch a ball
• Prefers to run than walk
• Likes to walk on low walls
• Throws a ball well

Intellectual

• Can name many familiar objects
• Understands soon and is beginning to wait
• Can ask for food and drink
• Knows where things belong
• Can build a tower of 8 blocks

Emotional

• Scared of animals, trains, thunderstorms and other sounds
• Bossy
• May hit, slap or bite when mad
• Defiant at times
• Selfish- `Mine`

Age Appropriate Toys

• Ride on toys
• Puppets
• Books
• Soft modelling clay
• Pretend play
• Bath toys
• Art materials
• Dolls and stuffed animals
• Alphabet and number toy

Comments:

Comments 1-25 of about 6305 for month 24
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karen (lb71) - 14.5 hours ago
Luv - how far along are you now? Congrats on getting the big girl room together! What a special treat for big sister! GL this weekend with potty training - YOU are brave. We're using this 3-day wkend to do the bed upgrade; waiting til probably summer to tackle the potty. Little Guy is just not there yet. Thank heavens, as neither is mommy. lol but for serious!

luv2bamama - 19.5 hours ago
Scarlet—Colleen just graduated to a size 5, but those are big on her. Thursday we go in for the rest of her stats. Today she is 2 years old; HOLY MOLY! She had her first night in her new “big girl room” in her big girl bed and only woke up once at 12:30 am. She told me she needed to pee, so we went and she peed on the potty. Then she wanted milk (I gave her water) then she wanted a book. I handed her a book, told her which one it was and walked out; that was the end of her. I don’t know how she did for Daddy this morning or how she will do later, but it is a step in the right direction. He put the gate up in the hallway so she would only have access to our bedroom in case she woke up while he was in the shower she could only find him….a few weeks ago she was sick and slept in our bed and woke up and he found her crying by the garage door thinking she was left alone. This upcoming weekend we are going to tackle Potty training since it is a 3 day weekend. Apparently 2 is a big year around our house! Did I mention before we finally gave her a haircut about 2 weeks ago. She no longer looks like a baby, she is my big girl!

gretch - 22.3 hours ago
ladies - Any of you all used Sittercity to find babysitters? I am giving it a go. Any tips?

gretch - Sunday, 12 Feb
Karen- you are brave. I sm too fearful of the wandering. Rory seems to have no desire to get out of his crib so I will keep him in for a while more. He is not as verbal as Emmett. I am hoping it will be easier when he can communicate a bit better. Dying to hear how it goes.

karen (lb71) - Sunday, 12 Feb
We're going to move E to a toddler best next weekend. Any advice? We've talked about moving the baby gate into his doorway, so when he does get out of bed, he can't roam the house unsupervised... but what if just put a hook& eye lock on the outside of his door for nighttime? Is that a good or bad idea? Moving the gate is possible, but then he'll have access to the office, our room, and both bathrooms during the day, and particularly the office is not child-safe, if he were to get in there without us watching him. Don't want to buy an additional gate at this age. Thoughts welcome!

karen (lb71) - Sunday, 12 Feb
Happy bday party, Colleen!

karen (lb71) - Saturday, 11 Feb
and about the site - women have been kvetching on the polls about profiles getting deleted, pictures disappearing, backgrounds deleted, blogs etc all gone; inability to log in; inability to create a new account; ads that plaster over the content parts of the pages, etc etc. Laura (site admin) posted on there that 'the IT Team' is working on the site, didn't say what specifically to fix, and didn't know how long it would take. My guess is that the text overrunning the margins is just another piece of whatever tech kerfuffle is happening on other parts of the site.

karen (lb71) - Saturday, 11 Feb
Emmett wears a size 6, but he also wears his braces inside them. He was wearing a 5 before he got the braces.

karen (lb71) - Saturday, 11 Feb
Exactly, Scarlet, but 25 lbs for a boy is a lower percentile than for a girl. I looked up 25 lbs on two diff calculators yesterday (including babycenter), and it puts E at about 15-20th, vs the 37th the nurse told me. Just makes me wonder if there are diff charts by state, or for the US vs national, or something like that. I'm now remembering there was another time that it seemed my dr gave us higher percentiles than the web calculators said. I find it curious.

scarlet begonia - Friday, 10 Feb
Sorry for the postspam! I had some downtime at work after a patient had a seizure and got taken to the ER by the paramedics. Scawy! Now it's quitting time and it's Travis' birthday. We are doing a simple dinner then date night tonight.... *wink*

scarlet begonia - Friday, 10 Feb
Quote from BabyZone on growth percentiles:

'The 'percentile' simply reveals where your baby growth ranks in comparison to the national survey. For example, if your daughter is in the 25th percentile for weight, that means she weighs more than 25 percent of baby girls her age, and less than 75 percent of baby girls her age.'

Here is the link: http://www.babyzone.com/toddler/toddler_development/article/growth-percentiles

scarlet begonia - Friday, 10 Feb
@Karen - isn't 37th percentile higher than the 25th percentile? At least, that is my understanding.

scarlet begonia - Friday, 10 Feb
So, now I am curious what size shoe everyone's toddlers are wearing. Aly is wearing a size 4. Not sure if that is small, normal, big???

scarlet begonia - Friday, 10 Feb
Oh, at her pedi appt this week Aly weighed 24lbs and was 32inches tall. Head circumference was 18.75, which all translates to:

Length = between percentile 5 and 10
Weight = between percentile 10 and 25
Head Circumference = in percentile 25

She may be small but her personality is BIG!! lol

scarlet begonia - Friday, 10 Feb
Anyone else having problems with everything on this site not aligning right? I see the end of everyone's text flow into the images on the right and those floater ads block about half of the text field to post messages. I have to use notepad to write out a post and copy and paste it over. Maybe it's IE? I am not sure. I haven't check firefox yet. Anywhoo....

Update on Aly - we took her to her pedi on Monday and they gave her some cough meds, suggested we give her benadryl nightly for a few days and she also got a breathing treatment, Flowva. She is doing loads better, but her cough got pretty nasty for a while there. No more fever and she's starting to eat a lot better. So glad!!

So you girls who work in the medical field, may I ask what you do? I work for a Family Clinic as their IT Coordinator. I manage pretty much ANYTHING electronic and digital here and I am in the process of implementing their Electronic Health Record system. It's not an easy task but the geek in me really enjoys it. I do not have a medical background but I am learning a lot! Enough to make me want to go back to school and become an RN and later on, an NP. I have enrolled at the community college to take my science gen eds (already have the others from my BA) but soon after I am done I will be looking into schools for my BSN and then bridge over for my masters. It'll be a while before I am done, but really... I am tired of sitting at a computer all day long. I really enjoy being involved with patients and helping people, which I do very little of right now. Anywhoo, it was definitely nice knowing that my boss, the MD here, would see Aly right away. Name dropping never came so easy! lol

karen (lb71) - Tuesday, 7 Feb
wait a minute. How can 25 lbs put a boy in the 37th p but a girl in the 25th? That makes no sense! Boys are bigger than girls - E's should be lower than C's! Anyone know how this can be?

karen (lb71) - Tuesday, 7 Feb
Cortlyn & Emmett are pretty close in size - E is 25.13 lbs (37th) and 33.75 in (24th). His head however remains at 93rd! 50.3 cm.

lillhill79 - Tuesday, 7 Feb
Cortlyn just had her 2 year check up, and apparently she's taking after my dad's side of the family (short and round,lol) She's 32.5 inches (10%) and 25lbs even (25%) her weight for height ratio is 60%. Everyone else on both sides of our families are tall and thin (DH is 6'2' 170 and I'm 5'6' 110 - and my mom is 6 feet 140lbs) so I blame my dad (5'8' 220 - and he's the tall one of the family)LOL. She's and inch shorter and 1.5lbs heavier than older DD was at this age. But she's very healthy and already exceeded all the goals they set for 2 year olds so we must be doing something right.

luv2bamama - Tuesday, 7 Feb
Laura; glad your little one is feeling better; nothing worse than an ER visit! We had our one and only trip to the ER at 4 weeks old because I tripped out my front door while she was in the baby bjorn and hit her head on the concrete. She was fine; I was a hysterical mess. It cracked her little skull, but it certainly hasn’t slowed her down! Karen; I knew your party would be a success! Way to go, and I hope the little guy feels super special! How is he doing with his leg braces; you haven’t mentioned them for a while. Colleen’s birthday is on Monday the 13th; we are doing her “party” on Sunday the 12th which means beer and BBQ chicken for the adults and home made mac & cheese for the kids with cupcakes. We took her to the park last night, and when we got home my husband told me how much fun she is becoming and how he loves the stage she is at right now because she is so animated and her personality is really shining through. He said the first two years were kinda tough since he couldn’t do as much for her, but now she has really become his little buddy. This is good since apparently my current pregnancy is a little more risky than the first one, and I’m on “pelvic rest” and shouldn’t be lifting and carrying my little princess for the time being.

karen (lb71) - Tuesday, 7 Feb
Have a great trip, lil! A friend advised me to use the airport to wear our my LO - while you're waiting to board, have your girls race to a pillar and back a few times to burn off any excess energy! Sounded good to me. :)

lillhill79 - Monday, 6 Feb
So I totally have short timers going on today. We leave on vacation as a family at 6:30 Wednesday morning. I'm so looking forward to it and am praying that I have enough activities packed to keep the girls occupied on the plane. This will be the first time the two girls will have to share a bed, that should be an adventure in it's self! And to add to the stress of the week, DH is currently in San Fran interviewing for a job with a new company. Luckily it wouldn't mean a move any time soon, but he's really excited by this company so we'll see if it's the right next step for our family.

lillhill79 - Monday, 6 Feb
Laura- you totally cracked me up, I love the gilmore girls! Glad to hear Aly is feeling better, I know how scary that must have been and I too am so thankful to work in a hospital so I always know who is the best physician for any given situation.

Scarlet begonia - Saturday, 4 Feb
Karen - so glad to hear everything turned out great! I am looking forward to having something really simple for Aly too. :)

karen (lb71) - Saturday, 4 Feb
Ah, what fun! We had our party this morning and it was really great. It ended up that only one family came (out of 5 we invited - one went out of town, one had family visiting, one had to work, and one was expected but didn't show up), but it was perfect because that family included E's favorite little toddler buddy and one of my closest mommy friends. We had a really great time, and Emmett is now crashed out HARD. Such a fun, fun day. And his birthday isn't even until tomorrow, lol. He's already opened a guitar, a toolbox full of tools, a monster truck, and a play rug to drive cars around on. We're going to let him open a few more things this afternoon, and then save the rest for tomorrow. He got really overwhelmed at christmas with opening so much stuff at once, so we're spreading it out this time, to give him a chance to enjoy each thing without getting hurried to the next. Ahhhh, my baby is nearly two. Isn't it strange how that simple fact makes a momma feel proud? But it does. :-)

jwalden - Thursday, 2 Feb
Scarlet- I'm glad to hear that Aly is feeling better. Nothing scarier then when our babies aren't feeling well and we'll do anything to help. I also work for a physician and know several others in our community and I LOVE it. Our pediatrician gets Jack in at the drop of a hat and they just love him. Helps to know people, especially since he is in daycare and unfortunately is sick constantly. Sounds like you guys will have a wonderful party and she'll have a great time. Karen- as far as you all being sick, I hoe it passes quickly. If for some reason you are still not feeling 100% by party day- I would think you can just give the others a heads up and they can make the decision to attend or not. I know some people are a little more particular about germs they are around but I hope that everyone is able to come and enjoy the day. Good luck.

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