Category: D

15 months this week (Tuesday, to be exact), wow! D is turning more and more into a little person every day, and that tiny baby who burst into our lives last August is quickly becoming a distant memory. Which kind of makes me sad. I absolutely loved the newborn stage – teeny little girl, depended on me and R for every single thing, could snuggle in and sleep for hours in the crook of your arm. But I have to admit, seeing the person whom D is becoming is amazing. She has the funniest, most incredible spirit, and watching her learn something new every day just fills me with pride. Like hey, we made that little human, and maybe we didn’t so bad after all.

So what’s new in the life of Miss D?

• We just had her 15 month checkup yesterday, and she is 32 3/4 inches tall, weighing in at 23 lbs. She loves stepping up onto the regular scale at the doctor’s office all by herself now, too.
• *Almost* has a couple words. When asked, “Who says moo?” or “How does the cow go?” she’ll reply “Mmm…” We just need to work on getting those Os tacked on there. And when prompted with, “How does the puppy go?” she’ll say “Woof, woof.” Ok, it sounds more like “fff, fff,” but we totally know what she’s saying. Unfortunately the “thank you”s we heard a few months ago are now nowhere to be found, something we need to work on reviving. Actual words can’t be far off, though, what with the sometimes endless rivers of chatter that flow from those little lips.
• LOVES her books. I think now more than ever, actually. I brought an old CD rack down from the attic a few weeks ago and loaded it up with all her books in her bedroom, and she will go in there time after time and empty the entire thing, just sitting there reveling in a pile of books. It is beyond cute to hear her reading them out loud, too, as the “bdyips, bdyips” and “bdyaps, bdyaps” make up countless stories. She does have a couple favorites, which she so hopefully carries out to you so she can climb up into your lap to have read. I love it.
• She is great at entertaining herself, which I also love. The other weekend R bought a set of those interlocking foam play mats to cover the floor, since we have no carpet in our house and the floor gets kind of cold (not to mention hard). They’re the alphabet and numbers from 0-9, and I cleared out an entire corner of our living room to lay them. We finally put away her playpen (the jumperoo made its way up to the attic a few months ago) and had enough room to use this new corner play area to hold all of her toys and things in the living room. It’s perfect, and she will sit over there and toodle away quite happily on her own (yes, toodle, i may have just invented that word too). She has a couple Magna Doodles, her little push toy, inflatable beer bottle (wonderful example we’re setting), kickball, corner pillow for lounging, shapes for stacking and putting through the correct holes in their respective boxes, gumball machine toy, whatever random pieces of this and that she collects from around the house, and of course more books.
• She will let us know when she’s hungry now by going over to her highchair, grabbing onto the tray, and acting like she’s trying to climb up it. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before she does this when we’re not looking and pulls the whole thing down on top of her. Not looking forward to that one.
• Is primarily still a champ sleeper. Her bedtime is usually somewhere between 7-8, and yes, she still takes a bottle of milk at bedtime. It’s not quite as necessary as it has been, because there are nights where she’ll be so tired we can just put her in her crib and she’ll fall right asleep without it. Most nights, however, she’ll start doing her sleepy eye-rubs and maybe get a little whiny, so we’ll give her her bottle, she’ll climb up and lie between R’s legs in a blanket on the couch, and drink her milk until she falls asleep. Or sometimes I’ll rock her in her room with the bottle, just depending on what we’re doing and how tired she is. I know we need to give this last bottle up soon, but she still loves it and I don’t think this nighttime routine is hurting anything. She’s been waking up a couple times in the nights lately, but I think that’s due to growing pains. At least I hope it’s due to growing pains and not a new non-sleep schedule she’s picking up, because that just doesn’t fit into my need-sleep schedule.
• Loves participating in all the activities at daycare – finger painting, water color painting on the easel, story time, finger plays, songs, and most especially playing out on the playground. There have been days when her class is outside playing when I arrive to pick her up and she won’t want to go home. Stinker! One day she tried to eat wood chips to avoid coming with me, another day she tried to permanently attach herself to the wooden rocking boat in her empty classroom so I couldn’t carry her out to the car. At least she likes daycare, right?
• This girl L-O-V-E-S to be outside. Which is awesome. She adores riding in her little seat on R’s bike, and when he picks her up like that from daycare they’ll often head to a park afterward to play on the playgrounds some more. Unfortunately those days may be over for the season, but they got a ton of them in this summer and fall which was so great. She loves going on walks in the stroller, as usual, but even more so is thrilled by just being turned loose in the yard to run around on her own. She plays in the grass, crunches leaves, picks up rocks, the whole shebang. And if you try to take her inside before she wants to go? Hoo boy, look out! You will instantly have a writhing, crying serpent in your arms. Fun. She’ll also stand guard at the front or back door if one of us has gone outside and dared leave her behind indoors, pining away for her chance to get back out there. Maybe someday we’ll have a bigger yard so she can really run free. Because right now she tends to try to escape down the sidewalk as far as she can get. Which doesn’t bode well for the next few years, seeing as she’s only 15 months old right now and all.
• Puppies remain her favorite animal, with I think cows now coming in a close second. Obviously she hasn’t and doesn’t see many cows up close like she does dogs, but the cows mooing in books are some of her favorites.
• Bath time is still a blast for her. Again, trying to get her out and dried off becomes a game of skill, wrangling a slippery, squirmy babe.
• She gives the best hugs and kisses, and when she snuggles up against my neck as I’m holding her on my shoulder is when I want to freeze time forever.
• This girl dances like no other and rocks out constantly. Whether she’s in her highchair, on your lap, standing in the bathroom, or just running around as usual, as soon as she hears music come on she will start bobbing and swaying. In fact, it is mandatory that we turn on the speaker in the kitchen when she’s in her highchair. She makes the rules, remember?
• Still doesn’t have a “lovey” or anything else she always sleeps with, but she does love to hug her plush toys tight and then throw them in the air to do somersaults. Funny little girl.
• I swear she’s learning how to snap her fingers. She will move her index fingers and thumbs together while she’s dancing, much as you do with your middle fingers and thumbs to actually snap. Hers don’t make noise, obviously, but it’s impressive to see her doing the motions nonetheless.
• She’s in size 3 diapers (4s for overnights) right now, but I think will soon be moving up to 4s. Her clothes are pretty much all 18 months minimum. She still wears some 12 month onesies and tops, but the pants are all too short if they’re smaller than 18M now. Guess she’s got my long legs.
• Eats all regular food, and has started learning to feed herself with a spoon. I know they work on this a lot at daycare, but when I hand her the spoon at home it gets used more as a prop, with her hands still doing most of the shoveling in of food. And I learned at her parent teacher conference Tuesday afternoon that only at home does she swipe her hands across her tray when she’s done eating to fling all the food that’s left onto the floor; they never see that at daycare. Awesome. Thank you very much, Squeaker.
• Has started learning to drink out of cups with no lids. They’re just the little tiny Dixie cups at daycare that they drink water out of throughout the day, but still. That’s a pretty big step. She has liked to drink out of our cups at home for months, but that generally results in one very wet little girl. I may have to get some of the little Dixies for her to use outside of school for practice.
• Has 14 teeth, with 1 just about to poke through, if it hasn’t yet already. I haven’t checked since the other night, when it was just barely still hiding under the surface. All the new ones are eye teeth and molars, so I can’t blame the girl for being a little crankier than usual sometimes.

I think that about covers it. A lot of the above is probably a little repetitive from recent months, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a bunch of stuff, but it’s hard to condense everything into a few bullet points when you’re dealing with such a multi-faceted child as D. 😉