Babycakes: 18 months!

 

This is definitely long overdue (a whole month!)... but the holiday season gets away from you. Better late than never, right? :) At least her picture was taken at the right time. Lizzie is now 19 months old, but this will review her at 18 months.

Health:
We're still battling an ongoing cough and runny nose. It seems like it's completely perpetual... we just get over one, and we start a new strain. At least she seems to be feeling well :)

We've now broken SIX teeth in the last month. We now have four on top, four on bottom, along with a molar on top and one molar on bottom as well. Girlfriend has had a few fevers the last week or so, but they've all been short-lived and haven't returned after a dose of Motrin. I've been worried she's actually been legitimately sick with each fever, but not so (hooray!). Let's hope our lucky streak continues through the holidays (knock on wood...).

We had our 18-month check-up about two weeks ago and found out some official stats. Girlfriend is about 30.5" tall and 21 pounds. I truly think she's probably thinned out more since then, to be honest. She's not been as interested in eating and more all about about playing instead. More about this later, though, in its' designated section :)

Sleep:

Sleep still remains pretty easy for us with Lizzie. She usually does wake up once a night (but this pregnant momma is sleeping hard these days, so I haven't noticed... sorry, daddy!) for "Buddy" (her pacifier). She'll definitely let us know when she's tired out and ready for bed -- it's not uncommon for girlfriend to grab my hand, take me to her room, request jammies, blankie and Buddy, say, "love you," and stand by her rocking chair. It is so sweet and just melts our hearts! Still naps like a champ, usually at least two to three hours!

Diet:
As I mentioned previously, Lizzie is becoming less interested in eating lately. It's not a picky thing, but more of an "I'm too busy playing to eat" thing or I'm thinking it could be a teething thing. The two exceptions to this rule are, however, cheese and oranges. She seriously cannot get enough!

Social:

Lizzie gets buckets of socialization at daycare each week, obviously. She's definitely learning some (not-so) awesome new tricks there like hitting and pushing. I've never seen or heard of her her hitting another child, though she's swung at us just a handful of times, which we're obviously not big on. When we tell her "no, we don't hit Mommy/Daddy," she is instantly remorseful, usually with some pretty sad tears (not tantrum tears, but sad ones). I have seen her push her cousin Michael a few times, which I'm also not a big fan of. Please tell me all children are like this at this age? Though I am grateful we're not biting because I know some families deal with that!

It seems the pushing happens when it comes to toy sharing or if someone gets in her space too much, so at least it's not just aggressive for no apparent reason.

Girlfriend loves her cousins. Last weekend, we went to the Bison playoff game with my parents, sister and her boyfriend, and Lizzie went to play at her cousins' house and apparently she didn't ask about "mama" or "dah-ee" (daddy) once. She loves those kids!

Milestones:

New words this month: what isn't a new word this month? My goodness, I don't think I can even come up with them because there's so many. She says classmates' names from daycare readily, thank you, sit (while pulling on my hand/doing a little dance/motioning toward the ground... so cute!), chicken, tacos, green, blue, purple, orange (correctly identifies all four typically), "two" (says it appropriately in sequence after "one"), Christmas, puppy, tree, light, blankie, truck, snowmobile (says "mobile"), van, Santa, Jesus, "chickies" (little chick crackers), bunny (says "my-ee"), fishies, cracker, marshmallow (mallow), tractor... seriously, too many to list!

She's starting to string two or three words together at a time quite often... "Daddy shoes", "____, where are you?".

She's taken a real interest in her dollies and their shoes lately. We've got some hand-me-down Polly Pockets and Barbie dolls that we let her play with (under supervision, due to those tiny pieces) and she's obsessed with putting on their shoes!

She's also been loving tractors. We don't hardly anything in terms of screen time still, but Andy will put on a tractor video here or there from YouTube and she'll say "Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi tractor! Hi! Hi! Hi!"... so sweet! She loves to drive by the John Deere dealership and look at them with Daddy :) She's also been loving Andy's new (to us) truck, snowmobile and lawn mower. She'll make a special request to go to the (cold) garage to look at and sit on them.

Girlfriend is still a dancer and  a book reader, but my personal new favorite is her singing! She definitely was attempting to sing Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer and sings Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star quite obviously now ("Ih-oh, ih-oh, eeyo star, under what-ooh ah... up, up, up, high..." again, so sweet!). 

Lizzie is quite good at those Look and Find books :) It's pretty amazing to watch!
As mentioned, she knows a few of her colors and can identify both star and heart. She also knows that two comes after one, and they told me one day at daycare that she was counting more than that for them -- proud teacher mom!

We're still in 12 to 18 month clothing, and I thought she'd be out of those relatively soon. However, it doesn't seem like that's around the corner at all. Obviously I could be completely wrong, but from my current perspective, I think we'll still have at least a good month in our current clothes at this point.