Ponytails, buckles and words - oh my!!

After a 20-minute terrible 2s meltdown this afternoon, I finally got Ilana's hair into an actual ponytail. Please pray for me, because this is going to have to be her summertime hair-do and I'm hoping it doesn't take a 20-minute meltdown every time. But, the result was beautiful. How many 23 month olds do you know that can do this?!

Holy moly! That girl is blessed with HAIR!! We went for a walk over to the Chili's that's in the parking garage that we use (Paul was gone today and I had no motivation to make a dinner, so we got take out). This is her new favorite game: one foot on the sidewalk, one in the grass.
Of course on the way over we had to stop and see the pretty bushes that are in bloom all around the parking garage. Notice the stick in her other hand. Ever since she could walk outside, she's always found a stick and held onto it for the entire time we're outside. I now call them her "walking sticks" and she actually uses them, even if they're too short - it's so cute!
These days Ilana LOVES buckles and keys/keyholes. During dinner, instead of feeding herself from her tray, she insisted that I feed her so she could do this:

She actually ate really well, I was very surprised (even chicken!). Also, usually the camera diverts her attention from anything, but apparently not with a buckle to work on. I'll have to remember this for the next few weeks. Awesome!
Ilana is REALLY becoming verbal very quickly. She was screened by a speech therapist last week and although her auditory comprehension was so high it would have kicked her out of qualification, they still recommended speech therapy for her, just to get her some more words. Her expressive communication scores were actually in the normal range, but she just doesn't say a whole lot. At the time she only had about 10 words, but even just today she's said ball, bush, and car all on her own, without me even prompting her, and they were clear enough that I understood what she was saying. Around 40 seconds into the previous video you'll also hear the word that, just in the past week, has become "please" for her. I know she knows words, she just doesn't say them. I don't think she's going to need much speech therapy before she's off and running and I'll be forever saying "please be quiet, Ilana, please be quiet." She even knows how to say her own name (and even this has become more clear in the past few days):

I have heard person after person say how their kid is growing up so quickly and Ilana took a long time to get here, but I feel like I can truly, FINALLY say, our little girl is growing up so much these days!
Now excuse me, but I've got to go see why she's woken up from bed - poor thing has awful allergies, so I might have to clear out her nose for the umpteenth time today. :(
-H