Jane at 2.5 Years Old

Life has been pretty hectic in the 2.5 years of Jane's life. When she was born, we lived temporarily in the States and thought to be able to do that for a few more years. But due to changing circumstances, I decided to quit my job with IBM when she was 5mo and to stay home with the kids. Sander found a job pretty easily, but the visa was hard to get. We run into so many problems with the visas, that we had to temporarily move to the Netherlands when Jane was 8mo. So she took her first steps on Dutch ground when she was 10mo. She celebrated her first birthday in a Dutch rental house. And she was riding her first trike on Dutch sidewalks. This all while being taken care of by daddy, since I had to take a free lance job in the Netherlands to pay for all our living expenses. In the end we did get the visas, but it had taken almost 10 months to reach that stage. That year was quite hard, and the net effect was that we ended up moving a total of five times, two of which were international, all before Jane had turned 1.5 years old!

Both as a baby and a toddler she was very oral and we often had to take disgusting objects like half-eaten snails out of her mouth. She also was the first kid of ours who swallowed a penny. Luckily it came out within a few days. It was NOT fun to dig in into every poopy diaper to see whether the missing penny was in there.... .:-)

She is one of those wanderers, although that is slowly getting better. When I didn't watch her for a few seconds, she would be in the middle of a street or engaging in something similarly dangerous or just plainly happily running away. In stores she would alternate between trying to run away and throwing a big temper tantrum because I wouldn't let her. Inside she would be investigating everything and climbing on everything, which sometimes was quite challenging. If she was not able to reach her goal with one chair, she even tried putting *two* chairs on top of each other! She hasn't outgrown the climbing yet.

Now she is 2 years olds and proud of it! She has all the two-ish behaviors very much perfected. Impressive temper tantrum, strong possessive skills, and a willingness to defend herself and her possessions with a lot of brute force :-) She was a very easy baby, but developed into a toddler, who is quite spirited, challenging and strong willed. She still is an extreme climber, a great runner and very physical. The latest she and Tara have been doing a lot is climbing our washer. It is almost as high as she herself is, but she gets on it, just on pure determination. She is a year younger than Tara but often does physical things sooner than Tara does. For example, climbing on the roof of the play house in our yard. Tara never did it, but Jane started doing it last year and then of course Tara followed. Same with doing forward somersaults on the floor. Jane started doing them when she was about 18mo and Tara followed her by doing them too. They also potty trained at the same time, Jane when she just had turned 2yo, Tara when she had turned 3yo. I went almost over night from 3 in diapers to 1 in diapers! Sometimes parenting those two is almost like parenting twins. I get asked whether they are twins all the time any way :-)

She is not very verbal yet, although she has started to make small sentences. She used to be generally happy, but at the moment she is in an emotionally very unstable state. She cries very easily and then goes to get a blanket, wants to be rolled up in it and cuddle, read, or watch a video. I am happy to oblige her :-)

She still nurses, usually only in the morning and at night. It looked like she would wean when I was at the end of my pregnancy with Kate and when I had to leave her with her grandparents shortly later during our green card trip, but we did pull through. She sleeps with Tara in a queen size bed in Tara's room, but often joins us at night. She will get out of Tara's room, quietly close the door and then politely knock on our door, and expect us to let her in! No idea where she got the knocking thing, she never does it during the day, but it sure is cute.

Falling asleep is real hard for her, she has a hard time 'turning herself of'. She will be laying down, throwing herself around a lot, sit up again, start to jump around, etc etc. She is able to fall asleep eventually, but it often takes quite a while.

She used to hate taking a bath, but finally got over it last summer. Now she enjoys the swimming pool and the bath. She likes being outside a lot. In the summer she played endlessly with sand and water, now during the winter she is often found outside playing in the snow, and even eating it!