My “baby” is leaving baby-hood behind without a single backward glance – this girls is on the move from the moment she wakes up to the moment she flops (literally) onto her tummy in her crib. This has resulted in more than one boo-boo (several bonks on her forehead, one busted upper lip) and many harmless tumbles. But, she is learning. And we installed a new child gate at the top of the stairs…because the girl could open the old one (and did!) all by herself..
Favorite activities include showing everyone her belly, playing ball,
getting shoes from the shoe cubby,
bringing me shoes from the shoe cubby (so I can put them on her feet),
playing with her toys (especially in B’s room) and around the stairs (she seems to think if she waits long enough, someone might turn their back so she can make a break for it),
playing in the kitchen (taking stuff out of the cabinets, pulling bibs off, playing with the fridge toys),
and reading books.
I’m truly not sure what her favorite is – whatever she is playing with, it always has her complete attention. In general, she can’t be distracted from that activity.
She is now taking baths with B (much to both of their delights). That became somewhat necessary when Jason went out of town for a week. I suppose we could got back to the old way (I bathe M, and he bathes B), but the girls like the new way so much, I doubt we will.
M takes fantastic naps when home with us (3+ hours), and unlike B, she also takes pretty good naps at school (usually 1.5 – 2 hours). Yay! Nighttime is still a bit of a struggle. She has been so sick the past few months, that it is hard for her to rest well. Plus, she really gets peeved when she doesn’t have her bink. Sometimes she just yells until she finds it and then goes back to sleep. Sometimes she yells until we come and find it for her. Either way, we often get woken up 2 or more times a night. We are hoping that this will change now that she is feeling better and/or when she is in the same room with B. Fingers crossed…
She weighs in the vicinity of 20 lbs., and seems to be growing like a weed. I am super glad spring has arrived, bc she has grown out of most of her winter clothes, and she has so many super cute spring/summer clothes that I want to see her in!
She communicates fairly well using a combination of pointing, grunting, talking, and sign language. She signs please, thank you, more, eat, and all done. New words include socks and shoes (gocks a goos), poop (goo goo), gotcha (ga ga). She clearly understands more than she says, as she follows directions (let’s go eat, let’s go change your diaper, get your shoes, etc.) quite well.
She does much better at eating, but unlike B, she is not always very willing to try some foods. We will work on that more later. For now, her favorites include goldfish (seriously, I think she would eat only goldfish if we let her), yogurt, puffs, Chik-fil-A chicken nuggets, and pretty much any baby food pouch we give her (except plain green beans). Drinking from the sippy cup is the biggest obstacle – she drinks, but not really enough, and she is not interested in the bottle anymore. We just try to make sure we supplement with lots of “wet” foods. She loves fruit sauces, but isn’t much interested in finger fruits (strawberries, bananas, apples, etc.). She seems to like avocado as long as we put some salt on it, and she likes toast “soldiers,” but won’t really have anything to do with noodles or rice. It is fascinating watching her eat. And she is QUITE CLEAR about what she wants and what she won’t have anything to do with…
She is growing so fast, but we are loving every minute. B in particular loves that she can play more with M now, and often lobbies for me to let them play up in her room by themselves. It is quite nice. 
The girls and I had a fabulous Saturday, including funny faced pancakes and an impromptu trip to a local event that included a princess meet ‘n greet and face painting. It had crafts and consignment stuff too, but we had to wait quite a while for the face painting, so there was no time for that. I have to say, B waited patiently in that line for 90 minutes to get her face painted. The only time she even hinted at a complaint was when I told her I wasn’t sure we would be able to do it (it was taking forever!). M was also a trooper – she found things to amuse herself, but what was really impressive was the fact that she didn’t have a melt down, even tho she was quite late in getting her nap. What amazing girls I have!
Rapunzel was the only princess on hand while we were there. B was so excited! Note: it was Saturday, so she got to pick out her clothes. She decided to be Snow White (hence the short sleeved dress with the slightly puffy sleeves and the headband with the bow). And she stayed in character while meeting Rapunzel…
I was sure my little princess would insist on some kind of princess face painting, but lo and behold, she insisted on being…Catwoman! More particularly, she insisted she was Snow White wearing Catwoman face paint…
The face paint even survived her nap (just a tad lighter),
So far, B and M get along great most of the time.
I know there will be squabbles in the future. Even now there are a few (e.g., when M pulls B’s hair, or when B snatches a toy from M), but for the most part they get along great. M LOVES to watch B, who is an expert at getting M to laugh. I have a few pictures, but it really is hard getting non-blurry pictures these days. M just can’t stop moving. When she does, B seems to be moving! On Valentine’s Day, this is the best I could get (and I took at least 30 pictures)!
B has decided to get in on M’s cabinet fun. The other night they had a blast playing some sort of hide-and-seek, which mostly consisted of M opening and shutting the cabinets while B was inside (with much hysterical laughter from both). The cabinet buddies (the stuff around B’s mouth is her “lipstick”):
I’m not kidding – right after she turned one M went through a huge metamorphosis. Gone is the relatively stationary/slow moving baby that only says Dada and nana (and once gy kee (sky kitty)) and refuses to eat finger foods. In her place is an on-the-move toddler that suddenly says at least 20 different words and regularly eats finger foods.
Personality-wise, M is surely the most outgoing of all of us. She regularly greets anyone and everyone that comes in her sphere with a “hi” (even if she does not bother stopping whatever else she is doing), and she generally has a smile for most people. She is also very, very snuggly – definitely my snuggle bunny. She is extra snuggly if she is sick or tired, but even when she is not, she will snuggle on my shoulder several times a day.
She is also t-r-o-u-b-l-e! She looks around the room, spots the most expensive or dangerous thing, and makes a beeline for it. I have personally witnessed her open the child gate at the top of the stairs without any help from anyone. She also makes her way around the kitchen emptying every cabinet she has access to with great glee. We baby-proofed the house for B, but never really needed it. With M we are finding new things to baby-proof every day.
Vocabulary-wise she has added a ton of words to her repertoire, including uh-oh (regardless of whether it was an accident), mama, anna (for Brianna), poppa, nana (for Nana and banana), di-puh (diaper), ah dah (all done), ball, baaaaa, mooooo, ka-ka (quack quack), baba (baby), yukee, gy kee (sky kitty), ga (cat), up, daan (down), and maa (more). She also signs all done and more. She is still an expert at the point and grunt to indicate what she wants, and her favorite way to indicate she doesn’t like or want something is to throw it on the floor, but we are working on it.
Mobility-wise she has gone from an expert scoocher to a full on walker. Crawling? pffffft! She saw no need for such things (I think I have seen her crawl three times). Right after Valentine’s Day she took her first steps by herself (three the first time), where she got up from her reading chair to walk to me. After those first steps we spent the next 30ish minutes with her walking to me, turning around, walking back to her chair, crawling into the chair, sitting down, and repeat. I didn’t quite know what to make of it when she seemed mostly uninterested in doing much walking for the next several days, but then BOOM! She is now walking everywhere! She can stand up without assistance, and walk anywhere from one step to 20+ steps on her own. Generally speaking, if she falls, she just gets back up and keeps going. She is also a big fan of the stairs. On the first day she crawled up and down multiple times. The next day she did it once. Now, she goes up a couple steps and then tries to crawl down (which is to say we are holding/propping/catching her to keep her from falling).
All of this activity is not without its mishaps. Last week she didn’t quite make it to the stair rails (upstairs) before losing her balance, ultimately doing a header right into the railing. She screamed, but not for long. Later we discovered a line on her forehead ~1″ long. You can see the end of it here:
Food-wise, the girl can eat! We took her to a food therapist to make sure there weren’t any obvious reasons for her reluctance to eat finger food (she gagged every time such things were in her mouth). Of course, the morning I took her to the food therapist, she ate more than I had ever seen her eat before, and almost more than I have seen her eat since. Favorites include puffs, bananas, goldfish, chicken, french fries, & fish (preferably fish sticks). In general she prefers crunchy and salty. We basically have started giving her whatever we are eating. If she doesn’t eat enough of that, we either add more formula to her bottle or we give her a pouch of baby food. As you can see here, she does not need our help anymore…
Needless to say, mealtimes are a tad messy these days. She still has texture issues re: spoon-fed food (rejects regular applesauce and grits). But she hasn’t been gagging. And the reflux we were worried she might have (after eating a lot the first time she threw pretty much all of it up) turned out to just be the stomach bug that was going around (which everyone but me ultimately got). We reintroduced sweet potatoes (they were in some puffs), and so far so good. Oats and oatmeal, however, are still on the no-go list. As for drinking, she nurses once in the morning and gets a bottle (mostly milk with a bit of formula) before nap and before bed. The bottles will be phased out as soon as she starts drinking enough milk from a sippy cup (some days she does pretty good, others she wants nothing to do with it). We supplement the bottles with formula as we phase in milk (and pretty much will stop once the formula is gone). As with everything having to do with nourishing this child, the sippy cup is a challenge. We are getting there.
As for activities, she loves to walk around and get into things, like the kitchen cabinets
and the bathroom cabinets
and the pantry, and pretty much anywhere having a door or drawer that is not locked. She mostly empties things out of the various areas, but occasionally she puts stuff back in. Other favorite activities are playing with the barn and music toys on the fridge, playing with her barn and ark animals, riding the rocking horse, playing with her kitchen, playing with her sister, and playing with chairs. In the bumbo seat, out of the bumbo seat, repeat.
In the reading chair, out of the reading chair, repeat. She also has really started looking at her books (as opposed to eating them). Even better, I had fun watching B “read” a story to M the other day while M sat quietly in her bumbo seat. She really seems to be learning to love her books!
Sleeping has been hit or miss lately. Now that she is in the older baby/young toddlers room at school they have fixed nap times every day. That seems to be working out great! Instead of only sleeping 20 minutes or so at school each day, she now sleeps anywhere from one to two hours! Hopefully that will continue. At home she always takes a very good afternoon nap (2-3 hours), but night time has been a different story. In her defense, she caught the stomach bug (the snuggle pictures above were taken when she had the stomach bug) and then caught another cold. She can not stand sleeping while stuffed up, so this past week she has woken us up (on average) six times a night AFTER we went to bed (it would be 8-9 if you counted the number of times we had to go upstairs before we went to bed). She generally goes right back to sleep once you give her a bink, but still, no fun for anyone. She seems to be getting better, so here’s to hoping that this will all soon be behind us (it has been a really, really rough cold and flu season) and she will go back to sleeping pretty much all night. At which point we will move her in with B!
