15 months

Emily turned 15 months on Friday! Our baby girl is quickly turning toddler on us, and it is fun to see her soak up life and show her personality each day. We don't have her well check until next week, but I did get to weigh her on Friday and she's 22 lbs 9 oz. We've really slowed down on the weight gain (she weighed 1 pound less 3 months ago), but she still eats a ton, so I guess that's fine. When I get her height standing up, I'm coming up with 30 1/4" so she's definitely grown taller in the last few months. She's now almost exactly half my height. I know that's not saying much, but it still amazes me, haha.

Things she's discovered this past month:
* Found those sea legs!! Walking can now get up to about 25 steps at a time before losing her balance. Still have lots of 5 step moments, too, but she's determined to get back up and keep walking now. 
* Pointing to her head, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, belly, fingers, feet, toes, knees, and arms.
* We got pat-a-cake down! She always wanted to just stare at me and not participate, but now she heartily jumps in.
* Animals sounds/motions: duck, rabbit, dog, sheep, horse, elephant, monkey (once), alligator (we clap for the snapping sound), and pig. I really am not sure how we arrived where we are, but she only wants to do the actual sound of the animal and not the word, if that makes sense. So a duck is the actual quacking sound and not the word "quack", a dog is panting not "woof", etc.
* Blowing the air when I say the word "wind" or "blow"
* Following directions really well. She's got great comprehension and follows most single or two step commands as long as she isn't wanting to resist what you are asking.
* Thanks to Greg finding fun ways to teach her, Emily is great about sharing!! I know this will change, but it is coming in handy when we need what she's holding or she needs to give a toy back to a friend.
* Climbing- very into climbing the stairs and going back down and climbing on the couch and into her toddler chair.
* Giving hugs and kisses, blowing kisses, waving hi and bye-bye. Up until today her wave was always squeezing her fist facing toward her (sooo cute). But today when she was waving to a man in the checkout line at the grocery, she was doing an open palm, outfacing wave side to side like we all normally do. Surprised me!
* Drinking from an open cup (with a steadying hand from us) and eating w/ a spoon and fork if we help her scoop. I need to be better about letting her just go at it with the utensils, because that's the only way she'll get good at it, but I've been resisting the mess. About time to give in, though!
*Experimenting with undressing. She can't quite get the shirt off, but she's got the wiggle out of it down when I get it started. Somehow knows how to get the pants off in the crib, haha. And very not into socks and shoes, so those come off frequently! Not good considering it's about to get super cold for a long time here, but I guess her toes will figure that out. Who can blame her, though. I'm a barefoot kind of girl, too, any chance I can get.
*Pointing to objects. This might seem trivial, but this only started this past week, and I was ecstatic when it did! We've had more than a few meltdowns from a lack of expressive language, so I am hoping that her new-found interest in pointing will help ease some of that frustration. 
* Sign language: please, thank you, eat, all done, milk, and bath. I'll lump her water signal in with this, too. If she wants water, she slurps the air like she's taking a big sip, haha.
* The word list really hasn't grown, and I plan to ask the doc next week if I should be doing anything differently than I am to help her with verbal expression. It seems like there is such a HUGE spread of what kids are doing verbally at 15 months. Lots of friends near her age are right with her...less than 5 words...but there are equally as many with long lists of them and learning new ones all the time. She likes to babble whole sentences throughout the day, but none of it is coherent and if I ask her to identify an object by naming it, she falls silent and moves onto the next thing. So maybe she's sensing pressure. And it might be that all this walking practice has consumed this past month. I do believe there's a link between gross motor development and the onset of talking, so I'll be interested to see what the next month holds since she's really started walking more this past week. I know that her babbling took off when she started crawling, so we'll see! 

What Emily loves right now:
*blankie at nap time
*peanut butter, bread, gold fish, yogurt, oatmeal, bananas, sweet potatoes, any cheese, turkey sausage, and avocado. She still eats her veggies but with much less enthusiasm than she used to. 
*buddy! buddy gets 10x more kisses than mommy and daddy
* her best friend, Ben. :-) She now recognizes a friend and is happy to see him when they play.
* the stairs. we spend a lot of time at the stairs.
* puzzles- she is starting to place the matching piece on top of the spot it goes in. She doesn't get it into the slot, but she does correctly place it on top of the spot.
* books- interest in books has really soared this past month. She now seeks them out often, sits with them turning the pages for a long time and will respond to something she recognizes (laughs at a baby smiling, pants when she sees a dog, bounces when she sees a frog, pats her head when she sees a hat). It is fun to watch her from a distance and know which page she is on in a book based on how she's responding.
* the camera-- this girl knows how to flash a cheesy smile! I am often too slow to capture that first big grin, but it is so adorable that she knows to ham it up when the camera comes out.
* brushing her teeth, brushing her hair and washing her hands.We all sit down on the floor together many mornings and brush our teeth together. She thinks she's such a big girl!

* finger painting. she loves to get messy with it and smear the colors.
* a cool breeze. it's been breezy and cool the last few days and each time the breeze hits her face, she smiles and laughs. she also does this with light rain showers. so cute!

Things she's not a fan of right now:
* Sleeping in, although we've been blessed with some almost 6:30 mornings lately.
* When we leave the room for sleep time. Still puts up a protest no matter how happily she snuggles into that crib.
* Fish, eating veggies if she can see/smell a carbohydrate at the same time.
* Socks, shoes, and pretty bows in her hair (sigh :-) ).
* The front door closing. 
* Having to wear a bib at mealtime (and yes, we very much need one!)

Such a long post, but this will help me remember what's been going on lately! We love her to pieces and are so blessed she's been given to us!