New this month...
We have a walker! (Although you already know that since I'm so caught up on the rest of my posts! I don't think has never happened before with a monthly update! But for the sake of having all the info in one post, I'm gonna repeat myself) She had walked before but at 13.5 months she decided to become a walker. Very little crawling anymore for this peanut! She was a determined little girl too. The first several days she would fall every few steps but she would get right back up and press on, only to fall again! Now she's dang near running! She still doesn't look incredibly steady but she is getting better all the time.
We have a talker! Okay, that's a bit of a stretch, but really, McKenna seemed to add a new word to her repertoire each day. New ones - hi, down, all done, cheese, shoe, night night, ball, bear, brother (and several I'm sure I'm forgetting). Now granted she's not saying these horribly clearly, but she does have a distinct word for each of them.
She started signing a little bit, but she's still not a big signer. She will occasionally do "more" or "milk". She frequently and enthusiastically/frantically signs "all done" but I dunno how much of that is signing and how much is that she just flails about because she doesn't like eating? She very consistently signs "sleep" though. That one is pretty cute too.
She also learned a bunch of animal/vehicles sounds. She's not horribly consistent on all the sounds, but she definitely has sheep, cow, plane, chicken and elephant down. There is the occasional fish, dog, and cat in there too. And she is very enthusiastic about what a dinosaur/tiger/lion says - ROAR! I wonder who she learned that one from?!?
I think what makes all this so fun is that you can see communication developing daily. I can tell she's understanding a ton of what I am saying and she's finding ways to get her point across. She's following commands fairly consistently. Well, when she wants to! She's still a naughty little thing, but I can tell she's understanding what she's supposed to be doing!
Kinda along the same lines, she's learning body parts. She found her nose first and adorably would poke herself in the nose on command. (or stick her finger up her nose. Still such a lady) She actually started this after we babysat for Katelyn one night. As always, she was fascinated with Katelyn and started poking Katelyn's nose. I pointed out her own nose and she got the connection right away. Since then she's found her eyes (and she always says "eye" as she pokes it out!), head, ears, hair, toes, mouth and tongue. She cracks me up with her tongue, sticking it in and out quickly like a little lizard!
She started blowing kisses.
See it was a busy learning month! I was amazed at the speed of which she was picking things up! You could almost see the light bulb turn on above her head!
It was not a good food month. I think she might be getting close to tooth #5, because we had some random chewing, crying in sleep, and a sudden refusal of most food. But it could also just be that she suddenly just got pickier. She was doing so good with finger food and now she is much less adventurous. And she was doing fairly good taking food off a spoon, but now she fights me for every bite! I know it's partly pickiness at least, because I've been able to stuff a piece in after fighting her and then all of a sudden she realizes that that's yummy and happily accepts it after that. It's very frustrating! She's also started chucking food off her tray just for the fun of it. So I can't even tell if she's done eating.
But it was a good sleep month! Right at the end of the month, we essentially phased out the morning nap. Oh, it is wonderful to get go places for more than an hour without feeling guilty about her missing her nap! And night time has been great! We've had a full couple weeks of sleeping solidly through the night - 8 to 6! She had a couple nights where she was crying in her sleep, but I think that a tooth and not hunger was the culprit. It is heavenly waking up and realizing the sun has already been up before me! Now if I could just get Austin to sleep later than 6:30, I would be set! Actually I think McKenna's early morning feeding is contributing to that - waking him from a deep sleep. So even though she goes back down for at least another hour, I don't get much more sleep. Well, unless I fall asleep on the couch while Austin watches cartoons in the morning.
She is very much into "babies" right now. Anyone who claims children can be raised gender neutral are nutso. I've always had stuffed animals for both kids. Austin couldn't have cared less. McKenna WUBS her babies though! Every morning she gets a new one from the basket and carries it around with her for the day, giving it hugs and kisses and snuggles! She calls them all babies, whether they are dolls or bears or bugs.
Good month! I can't wait to see what this next month holds!
No comments:
Post a Comment