As per usual, this is behind! Lizzie girl is now 20 1/2 months... this post was written two weeks ago, and the photo was taken over a month ago -- but that's okay :)
Health:
Everything's been looking great with Lizzie. She now has all of her one-year molars (finally). I think we're almost caught up on all the teeth we didn't get in our first 13 months ;)
Sleep:
Usually girlfriend wakes up once or twice a night and needs "Buddy" (pacifier). Other than that, though, she's usually all set to go back to sleep.
I still rock her to sleep for naps and nighttime, and though I don't want to give that up, I do recognize that with twins on the way, a bedtime rocking may not be available every night in a few months. I've also been thinking a lot about the transition from a crib to a toddler bed. Any opinions? Thoughts? Past experiences? I'd love to hear them. Realistically, I don't anticipate the twins needing cribs until they're six months old, as I plan to have them in bassinets in our bedroom. She has asked for a few nights straight for her crib at night, versus me rocking her. However, once she gets in there, she doesn't fall asleep and we end up rocking her anyway. So what do we do? If anyone has any suggestions, we are open :)
I still rock her to sleep for naps and nighttime, and though I don't want to give that up, I do recognize that with twins on the way, a bedtime rocking may not be available every night in a few months. I've also been thinking a lot about the transition from a crib to a toddler bed. Any opinions? Thoughts? Past experiences? I'd love to hear them. Realistically, I don't anticipate the twins needing cribs until they're six months old, as I plan to have them in bassinets in our bedroom. She has asked for a few nights straight for her crib at night, versus me rocking her. However, once she gets in there, she doesn't fall asleep and we end up rocking her anyway. So what do we do? If anyone has any suggestions, we are open :)
Diet:
Lizzie has somewhat lifted the ban on eating lately. Her favorite veggies are pretty reliably broccoli and sweet potatoes. She has to be pretty darn hungry to eat peas or beans these days ;) Which is funny, because beans used to be near the top of the list. No matter -- I'm just grateful we're interested in some vegetable!
Lizzie has somewhat lifted the ban on eating lately. Her favorite veggies are pretty reliably broccoli and sweet potatoes. She has to be pretty darn hungry to eat peas or beans these days ;) Which is funny, because beans used to be near the top of the list. No matter -- I'm just grateful we're interested in some vegetable!
Otherwise, she's a good eater and will eat pretty much whatever. She's learned the word "meat" and will ask for it if I don't give it to her fast enough at suppertime ;) Certainly a favorite meal of hers is tacos. She will ask for them by name before supper... ha! She's turning into a pasta lover (just like momma) and has a new love of whole wheat Goldfish crackers. Any opportunity for a snack, she'll ask for "fishies". We also have some delicious cupcake graham Goldfish, but those don't hold a candle to the cheddar ones in Lizzie's world. She will also ask for crackers by name, so we'll usually give her a Triscuit, which typically takes her 10 minutes to eat (and leaves a nice trail of crumbs all around the house... not my favorite part).
Oranges and bananas continue to be a front-runners in terms of fruit. She still loves her berries as well.
Girl loves her milk! Asks for it all the time. We try to do water unless it's a mealtime, but usually she'll deny water (er, throw a tantrum about having it) unless it's in my hospital mug with its big straw of course :) Then she's a guzzler. We take turns taking drinks when that happens, though I'm not sure who ends up getting more water ;)
We have finally given up the nighttime bottle, right around Christmastime. We'd been forgoing it for a number of nights in a row, not on purpose, but due to our busy schedule and her falling asleep in the car without any nighttime "snack" at all and then being put directly into her crib. Anyway, giving it up was more about Mom (isn't it always?) than her... I just couldn't cut that tie! I love the rocking and the sleepiness that would come from the bottle... so peaceful and calm. But I certainly knew it was time (a long time ago). So now we let her pick out a snack (usually "fishies", surprise, surprise), get her jammies on, grab her blankie and buddy and pick out a few books. We read them on the floor in her room while she snacks; when she's done, we brush teeth and get in the rocker for bedtime. I can confidently say that Lizzie loves this new routine in so many ways. The books, the snacks, the cuddle-up time... I really think she looks forward to it, and dare I say it, I may even like it better than the bottle ;) It does take longer, but I really love and look forward to it.
Social:
I've noticed from picking Lizzie up at daycare that she's really started to interact with other kids more. She's always been interested in other kids (especially babies, who apparently include kids even a little older than her...), but now she'll play "peek-a-boo" with them, give hugs, hold hands... not necessarily converse with them, but she does get a kick out of and giggle with them :)
We did have our first biting incident at daycare a week ago or so... Lizzie was not the biter, but instead the bitee. She had four nice little teeth marks that even broke the skin on her shoulder... yikes! We felt so bad for our poor girl, but I'm sure she was fine. Still, it was our first bite experience, so it was a little startling ;) We are glad she's not the biter, though.
We did have our first biting incident at daycare a week ago or so... Lizzie was not the biter, but instead the bitee. She had four nice little teeth marks that even broke the skin on her shoulder... yikes! We felt so bad for our poor girl, but I'm sure she was fine. Still, it was our first bite experience, so it was a little startling ;) We are glad she's not the biter, though.
Milestones:
Lizzie is starting to string words together quite often. "Momma sit couch" is a common phrase these days :) For some reason, girlfriend loves to sit on the couch and talk, play, cuddle, whatever. It's pretty cute.
New words: sit, couch, Big Bird, Stuffins (Doc McStuffins), fishies, neat, nice, cool, hot, done, washcloth (sounds like "ca-coth"... she will ask for a washcloth anytime she's messy), nose, icky, messy, puppy (used to be "buh-buh" and then turned into "woof-woof", but is now actually "puppy"), truck, mower, fix, bear, van,snow, ice, Christmas tree, bunny (actually sounds like "bunny" these days), reindeer ("ain-eer"), Jenny, Noah, Mykenna, Brayden, Michael (she said her cousin, Michael's, name five times an hour just after they left after Christmastime), Josh, Tracy, Rachel, Jake, Desi, Joseph, Mary (identifies Joseph, Mary and Jesus in her Bible), Bible, oopsies ("oopie"), peek!, "no stop!"... she's now saying "three" in sequence after one and two, which means she can almost count to three (she had the "two" down in sequence after one before, but she can't count on her own/give meaning to those numbers at this point), knows many of her colors reliably (blue, green, purple, orange, black), mailbox, poopy, potty... so many to list, and it goes on and on. Her vocabulary is constantly growing and she is always repeating words we say.
If you do something she doesn't like, she'll tell you, "stop!" or "no!"... mostly this comes when Grandpa or Daddy is doing something somewhat annoying ;) She also asserts herself and uses the word, "no!" loudly when waking up in the morning (just like a teenager already...) and if you're asking her to do something she doesn't want to do (like walk to communion at mass... she asserted herself very loudly in that particular instance, a few times).
New words: sit, couch, Big Bird, Stuffins (Doc McStuffins), fishies, neat, nice, cool, hot, done, washcloth (sounds like "ca-coth"... she will ask for a washcloth anytime she's messy), nose, icky, messy, puppy (used to be "buh-buh" and then turned into "woof-woof", but is now actually "puppy"), truck, mower, fix, bear, van,snow, ice, Christmas tree, bunny (actually sounds like "bunny" these days), reindeer ("ain-eer"), Jenny, Noah, Mykenna, Brayden, Michael (she said her cousin, Michael's, name five times an hour just after they left after Christmastime), Josh, Tracy, Rachel, Jake, Desi, Joseph, Mary (identifies Joseph, Mary and Jesus in her Bible), Bible, oopsies ("oopie"), peek!, "no stop!"... she's now saying "three" in sequence after one and two, which means she can almost count to three (she had the "two" down in sequence after one before, but she can't count on her own/give meaning to those numbers at this point), knows many of her colors reliably (blue, green, purple, orange, black), mailbox, poopy, potty... so many to list, and it goes on and on. Her vocabulary is constantly growing and she is always repeating words we say.
If you do something she doesn't like, she'll tell you, "stop!" or "no!"... mostly this comes when Grandpa or Daddy is doing something somewhat annoying ;) She also asserts herself and uses the word, "no!" loudly when waking up in the morning (just like a teenager already...) and if you're asking her to do something she doesn't want to do (like walk to communion at mass... she asserted herself very loudly in that particular instance, a few times).
Lizzie has a great memory. We will tell her we're going to Grandma's house and she'll say, "Michael? Rachel? Josh? Tracy? Brayden? Noah? Mykenna? Jake? Desi?" because she remembers they've been there when we have. She'll also talk quite often about fixing the lawn mower (Andy uses it for snowblowing) and the truck, because I told her Daddy was fixing the mower and truck once... "fix truck?" "mower, fix?" It is very cute. She still loves to visit Daddy's "toys" in the garage (mower, truck, tools).
Singing more and more and loves to dance and say "dancin', dancin', dancin'!" So cute!! She especially loves to do this on top of any new "surface" (a towel, a squishy mat, etc...) and inside of her teepee she got for Christmas.
Singing more and more and loves to dance and say "dancin', dancin', dancin'!" So cute!! She especially loves to do this on top of any new "surface" (a towel, a squishy mat, etc...) and inside of her teepee she got for Christmas.
Loves books still. We read a Berenstain Bears book called The Big Road Race and she loved it for a few days, always wanting to look at the pages where some cars had accidents and saying "uh-oh," about their predicaments. After we read it one night, I was rocking her to sleep and she took out Buddy and said, "uh-oh, uh-oh, uh-oh,"... she was obviously thinking about the broken cars in the book. She wanted to read it the next night, but then hasn't wanted much to do with it from then on; I think it somewhat disturbs her because the cars all got hurt. In terms of other books, though, we've noticed she'll sit for longer books/books with more text more than she did before.
We are still wearing our 12 to 18 month clothing; in fact, I even noticed a few 6 to 12 month clothes and jammies mixed in the other day. Those 6 to 12 month pants are getting a little short, however ;) So it's definitely time to put those in our baby clothes box. Anyway, girlfriend won't need 18 to 24 month clothes for anything but the length in the pants, so we'll see what happens there. I'm thinking we'll be in the 12 to 18 month categories for quite some time yet (another month?).
We are still wearing our 12 to 18 month clothing; in fact, I even noticed a few 6 to 12 month clothes and jammies mixed in the other day. Those 6 to 12 month pants are getting a little short, however ;) So it's definitely time to put those in our baby clothes box. Anyway, girlfriend won't need 18 to 24 month clothes for anything but the length in the pants, so we'll see what happens there. I'm thinking we'll be in the 12 to 18 month categories for quite some time yet (another month?).
