McKenna Toddler Summary: 20 Months Old

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A full summary of life for this 20month old. Find out what daily life was like and find a 20month old sample schedule to follow.

McKenna 20 months

This is a summary for McKenna 19-20 months old. I don’t think I could love this age any more. Everything she does is adorable to me…well, almost. It was not adorable yesterday in church when she screamed several times at her siblings.

Okay, sidebar. My husband and I were both singing in sacrament with two other people. You don’t know the exact time you will go up; it is just after the speaker is done. It could be in one minute or 20.

McKenna was on one yesterday. I don’t know what it was. But I couldn’t promptly take her out into the hall like I usually do because I didn’t know when I would be up. I was so frazzled by the time it was time to sing.

Afterward, she tried to hit my husband (out of fun, not anger, but still not okay with me) and I took her out into the hall where she instantly transformed into an angel and sat on my lap as quiet and nice as could be. She knew she was in trouble. 

Let me tell you, we have one more month before church moves to 9 AM instead of 1 PM and I, along with many other mothers, could not be more excited.

Back on track. Despite the tumultuous times that come with this age range, I find this age so much fun.

EATING

Eating is as intense as ever. By intense I mean that she eats a lot of food and loves it.

She has figured out what sweet things are and where I keep them. She will stick a hand out and say “cookie” and is concentrating so hard she shakes.

If she had ever read Matilda, I would swear she is trying to move the sweet item to her using her mind.

She doesn’t understand why she can’t just have “cookie” whenever and why she can’t have it first in a meal, but she is start to figure out that is just the way it is.

A big event is that she is starting to drink a good amount of milk. Once I wrote that post on sneaking milk into the day, she started drinking it.

Maybe she was just holding out so I wouldn’t forget about writing the post? My mom also introduced her to chocolate milk on Thanksgiving, which you can imagine was a huge hit.

>>>Read: What To Do When Your Child Hates Milk: Adding Dairy to the Diet

COMMUNICATION

This is going well. I think she is about to hit a huge language leap. As for right now, “uh-uh” currently means “yes.”

Speaking of chocolate milk, she finished her first cup, then held it out asking for more. My aunt took it and said, “Do you want more?” To which she replied “uh-uh.”

So my aunt, of course, put the cup down. McKenna then gave her a very dirty look. I had to explain that right now, no means yes. It was quite funny.

ROOMTIME…SUCCESS!

Hurray! Success! She is now officially in roomtime.

Each day, I would go in and put her on the floor as I set up the playpen and got it ready. She would cling to my leg all upset. That was good because it showed me she wasn’t ready without me having to officially try it.

One day when I set her down and she walked over to her toys and started handing them to me.

I took them, then she came and arranged them in a circle. She then sat in the middle of the circle and said, “bye-bye.” So I left. She played in her circle of toys not budging.

It took her a week to move at all, but she only got up to get more books then went back to her circle. She is slowly getting more comfortable with the idea of playing in the room.

I am not sure what drove her to decide playing in the room was okay, but I am thrilled to no longer be putting up and taking down a playpen!

MIMIC

She is such the little mimic right now. I love having her tag along with me as I sweep and do other chores. She loves to help and is a good little worker. I can give her the placemats and she will put them on the table as best she can. It is great. 

SCREAMER

One day early on in this month, McKenna found her screaming voice. That female intuition kicked in one day and she screamed at the top of her lungs at Brayden.

He immediately backed off and she knew she had a powerful weapon at her disposal. I have been working to banish that behavior, but as you read in my opening story, that is definitely not a full success right now. 

>>>Read: The Screaming Non-Verbal Baby/Toddler

HAIRCUT

While I have adamantly vowed to never do bangs with a little girl (I don’t want to keep up on trimming bangs on a wiggly little one) I decided McKenna looks much better with bangs and had to cut them.

She held quite still, which isn’t surprising because she does pretty well when I do her hair. So I will be having to trim that every so often (remember my post Never Say Never?).

>>>Read: Parenting Tip #1: Never Say Never

NAP

Nap is good. Nothing of interest to report.

NIGHTMARES

Just last night, she had her first nightmare. I know that cry. It took her a minute of being held to calm down.

I think it was largely to do with being tired from missing a nap at church. Somehow, Kaitlyn skipped the nightmare thing, but Brayden had them, so we know what a nightmare cry is like. 

>>>Read: Nightmares vs. Night Terrors: How To Help Your Child Through Each

NIGHTTIME SLEEP

One day, McKenna was playing a recorder (you know, the musical instrument) and fell and cut the roof of her mouth open. Scary. But she was okay.

Even so, we had to do a soft diet for a couple of days and had to keep the wound rinsed well with water. She is also a thumb sucker, so I wondered if it would interfere with her nighttime sleep.

Night one she did great.

Night two, she woke every two hours until midnight. We would go in, rocker her for a while, then put her in bed. Both my husband and I enjoyed this immensely. But after a couple of nights of that, I could tell she was starting to enjoy it immensely and was waking just to get a visit. 

The problem with that is that interrupted sleep is not as restful as uninterrupted sleep. So we cut back to just picking her up and holding her for a minute before we put her back in bed. After one night of that, she stopped waking up.

>>>Read: Weaning Thumb/Finger Sucking

OUR SCHEDULE

8:15–breakfast
9:00–bath/get ready
10:00–sibling playtime
10:30–independent playtime11:30–learning time
12:00–lunch
1:00–nap
4:00/4:30: get up5:00–Dinner. Free play and family time
8:00–in bed by this time. Sometimes sooner.

GOOD BOOKS/WEBSITES

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