this will be the longest, most scattered monthly update ever. i've written it over the course of several days so even though i've done my best to make it logical and organized... i make no guarantees for how it's turned out.
last month, baby girl got this little people nativity set. she wasn't too into it. then we left and came back and you can tell how much she's grown by how she plays with it so differently in just four weeks time. she really enjoys it now. she stands all of the people up and even tries to stand baby jesus up on his feet which is hilarious because he can't stand up and she'll try relentlessly before we finally tell her to give up.
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| check out those legs. like a cheerleader. |
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| putting everyone in the manger |
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| still sleeps with her head in the crib bumper so she allllways wakes up with crazy bedhead. |
she loves attempting puzzles now and even though she can't always get the pieces in, she knows where they all go and she tries tries tries and she actually pretty frequently gets them in!
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| cheerleader legs again |
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| upside down sheep |
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| can't figure out why it doesn't slide in |
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| ha |
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| and then she made a sled out of her puzzle board and slid around the kitchen. creative. |
baby girl still loves oatmeal and eats a bowl almost every morning for breakfast. i buy giant costco boxes of the quaker old fashioned oats and between baby girl and making granola, we go through that stuff fast. when i can, i make the oatmeal (just two minutes in the microwave) and set it out to cool before i go upstairs to get baby up from bed. that way when we come down, her food is all ready to be eaten.
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| when she noticed her oatmeal outside she was a whole mess of grunting, pointing, and signing "please" to get that stuff on her tray ASAP. |
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| baby eats her oatmeal in chunks. i felt like a genius when i figured this out. that way i can unload the dishwasher or get stuff done in the morning. |
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| still eats with both hands. normally at the same time but sometimes favors the left. |
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| eating is serious business around here. |
bananas. this kid can throw back a banana faster than you can say "choking hazard." i never knew she loved bananas so much until recently when she's been able to communicate so well. i give her half a banana at a time and she takes full adult sized bites. normally she's done and asking for more before i've even had a chance to look back and check on her.
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| her gigantic bites make her look like a monkey, don't you think? |
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| how bout now? monkey, right? yes. |
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| "let's just stow this under the chair for a minute while i chew my current bite." |
baby girl adores her daddy. she points to the door and asks and talks about him so much when he's gone. and if it's the evening time, i can bribe her to do almost anything by saying, "first we have to _____ and then daddy'll be home and we can play with him!"
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| a common dinner occurrance. he likes to share his dinner and feed her in his lap. butternut squash and grilled cheese sandwich. |
the phone fetish is still going strong. she still makes everything a phone. "hi!" "hello!" all. day. long. the latest obsession now though is holding things up to both ears. and they don't have to be matching items. any two things will do.
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| "hi!" with a rubber ducky and electric razor cap |
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| what a little clown |
baby girl's hair is concurrently getting longer and more unruly. it was pretty cute while we were in atlanta because the humidity made it curl, back in colorado though, not so much. the good news though is that baby girl loves for me to put her hair in a ponytail! i gave up on bows and flower for a while because she puts so many things on her head and moves around so much that they always slip out of her fine hair. but now that i know she likes getting her hair done, we'll probably be doing the pony tail. baby girl goes to her bathroom, opens the drawer, and hands me a tiny rubberband. then she sits on the counter and looks in the mirror while i wet, comb, and do her hair. then she'll frequently run back to her closet and request a flower or bow... ha. so many preferences!
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| with a little style help from her daddy |
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| aaannnddd she looks like a boy |
back to bananas. did i mention she'll request a banana every snack time, meal time, and just whenever she sees our fruit basket? even if she's just eaten, i'll honor her request for a banana and she'll polish it off like it's nothing. lately she's been averaging two bananas a day. i don't even bother putting her in her highchair to eat one because it is gone. so. fast.
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| when it comes to bananas, she's like a ferocious animal in the wild... or a monkey... like on her pj's. |
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| banana with a shovel |
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| and licking the shovel clean |
baby girl is really good at looking for things. she's so helpful when i ask her to find her sippy cup, a toy she's been playing with, or something of mine that she's taken and now i can't find. she knows all the best places to look for things and it's especially cute to see her look under chairs and sofas and beds.
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| notice that she still has a fist full of banana. |
baby girl really enjoys sitting in adult chairs, benches, etc. before she just used to stand or climb around but now she'll go up to a chair at our kitchen table and pat it while looking at me and signing please. if she pats something, that means she wants to sit there. it's the same patting people do when they're indicating to someone that they want them to sit next to them. like that one scene from that first date in how to lose a guy in ten days. tell me you know what i'm talking about. i love that movie.
baby girl is consistently telling me when she poops. pointing to the back of her diaper saying "poop." or if it's really wet, she may point to it and say "diaper." i was originally planning on starting potty training at 2.5 but maybe we'll start a couple months earlier if she seems to be interested. we'll see how things go. i can't believe i just said "potty training." yikes.
baby girl continues to make funny faces and cracks herself up.
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| typical. and don't you think she looks like cindy lou who? |
baby girl is a packer and an unpacker. she's really good at cleaning up, but she's also really good at unloading the contents of every drawer, cabinet, basket, etc. really.
baby loves coloring.
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| this is what baby's coloring looked like a month ago. i wish i had a more recent picture though because she colors like a mad woman now. |
baby girl is even more affectionate with inanimate objects. she'll blow kisses to me every time i ask, but she saves the real hugs and kisses for anything without a pulse. dora, little people, the wall, you name it. many times, she's walked up to the wall, kissed it, laughed, kissed it again, laughed, kissed it again, laughed, kissed it again, laughed, banged her nose while kissing it too excitedly, and cried. it's hilarious. but it also makes me wildly jealous of our walls. she'll also kiss my feet when i'm in bed on the computer and she wants my attention. that's kinda fun.
baby's 18 month well check went really well. apparently 18 months means you're a big kid because the nurse weighed her on the big kid scale in the hallway and did her height with the ruler on the wall in the hallway too. when the doctor came in she commented on how much weight my baby had gained. "21.5 lbs! wow! what a big jump!" then i had to break it to her that that was in the hallway with eight layers of clothes on and probably really inaccurate. so she went down the hall and got a baby scale, we stripped baby girl down to nothing and what do you know, she barely broke 20 lbs. i had the idea to feed baby a large banana right before we went to the doctor so it would be sitting in her stomach like a big crescent of lead, mercury, really heavy substance, whatever. since she was less than an ounce above 20lbs, i credit myself for her breaking into the twenties. it was a stroke of genius. really, how embarrassing for your 18 month old to only weigh 19 lbs? i think this is also the reason that this was the first time EVER that her weight percentile has gone up. seriously. it goes like this...
birth - 84%
3 weeks - 46%
2 months - 26%
4 months - 19%
6 months - 12%
9 months - 9%
12 months - .98%
18 months - 2.89%
ha.
1.17.12 - 18 month appointment
20 lbs .8 ounces 2.89%
2' 7.5" 45.35%
hc 45 cm 12.51%
baby girl has twelve teeth fully in (four top front, four bottom front, four molars. and has been getting in two more on the bottom for over a month. soooo slow getting all the way up. she's also been on so many flights i lost count about a year ago. probably mid twenties i think. and we have two more trips before she turns two so we'll add four more flights to the tally. and she loves doing the motions to pat-a-cake. sooooo i think that's everything of major importance i can think of. how'd i do? ;-)
aside from onsies, which are still size 6-9 months, baby girl is wearing mostly size 12-18 month clothes because that's what we have winter clothes wise. i still have bought her almost nothing because we've been blessed with tons of gifts and handmedowns. so even if some stuff doesn't fit right, we try to make it work. dresses are a bit big, as are sweaters and jackets but we can roll the sleeves up. pants are super tricky because when they fit in the waist and legs, they're too short. if they fit in the length, she looks like a thug. we have one pair of jeans that fits well. and because it's so cold here, i layer leggings or tights under them which makes them stay up better but it makes it more difficult for baby girl to more around and get up after a fall. isn't that just the nature of jeans though? that's why they have spandex now! anyways, shirts fit mostly fine although sometimes roomy and short. tights are getting too short in the length. shoes are a size four. diapers are size three. hats and hoods are always requested... especially if we go outside. yesterday as we were leaving walmart, walking from the register to the exit, baby girl leaned to the basket of the cart, got her hat out of my purse and put it on her head. then she just looked at me like "that's what we're supposed to do before we go outside, right?!?!" but really, she loves jackets... especially with hoods, and requests to wear them every day. also, her favorite pair of shoes is her red patent leather church shoes. she also tries to wear those all the time.
our typical day looks like this:
8ish - (although really anywhere between 7 30 and 9 30) wake up
until 9 30 - get dressed and eat (either order though)
until 10 30 - play/ get me dressed and ready, head out
10 30 til 12 30 we try to go out every morning, mostly either story time, play date, or walmart and errands
lunch
1 15 or 1 30 nap (this time totally varies on wake up time, how late errands keep us, and baby's mood.
a good nap is 3 hours. sometimes it's only two, sometimes it's over three. yesterday was 3h20m, the day before was just over 2 hours. it varies, but normally it's at least 3.
until 5 - wake up, maaaybe redress (she gets flannel footies for nap during the winter) but probably eat a banana and stay in flannel pj's til bedtime. we play and attempt to make dinner and take pictures. since honey's work schedule varies so much, this is always just cozy unstructured time at home, normally in the kitchen. this explains why most pictures of baby girl include bad lighting, a messy kitchen, bedhead, and flannel footies. it's because our pictures are taken at 6 pm while we wait for daddy to come home.
6 30 or 7 30ish - dinner
until 8 - playtime
8 - head upstairs and get ready for bed (teeth, special nighttime diaper, warm pj's, space heater (she has a love affair with her space heater), books, snuggles, prayer, crib) which can last as long or short as we want it... but it's normally 10 or 15 minutes.
i normally expect one wake up which can be at any time during the night, as early as 10pm, as late as 6am. i just hand her a binky and she lays down to go back to sleep. if i give her a binky to go to bed at night, she'll sleep all the way through (this was the case in for the whole month in atlanta when i gave her a binky every single time i put her down for nap or nighttime) but i don't give her a binky for nap so i don't want to give her one for bedtime either and i really don't mind getting up once during the night. side note: most recently, even at walmart or church, she doesn't need a binky... just a snack or something to hold and she'll sit nicely for an hour or so.
baby girl has twelve teeth fully in (four top front, four bottom front, four molars. and has been getting in two more on the bottom for over a month. soooo slow getting all the way up. she's also been on so many flights i lost count about a year ago. probably mid twenties i think. and we have two more trips before she turns two so we'll add four more flights to the tally. and she loves doing the motions to pat-a-cake. sooooo i think that's everything of major importance i can think of. how'd i do? ;-)
but really, this right here is the typical life... pj's, running, bedhead, and smiles.
more often than not, this is what we're doing. and i'm loving every second of it.
1 comment:
You are such a good mom, friend. :)
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