Taking the Scenic Route

My baby girl is 18 months old today.  I thought I would give a rundown on the cute things she is doing now.

• Pretend play is in full gear.  She “feeds” her stuffed animals and tries to give them drinks from her sippy cup (resulting in wet faces often times because the sippy cups are hand me downs from Zane and took a lot of abuse from him already.  They are pretty leaky at this point, but since we never put anything but water in them, it isn’t really that big of a deal)
• She also “cooks” to a degree with Zane’s kitchen set.  It isn’t very sophisticated yet, but she tries.
• She can get herself mostly undressed and is trying to dress herself.  She still gets stuff stuck on her head a lot though.
• Her favorite game seems to be “run in the circle through the bedroom/bathroom/hall/living room” while playing a sort of peekaboo/hide and seek with daddy.  She is so cute when she is looking for him because she will lean over and crane her neck around corners looking for him. 
• She is just starting to try and get to sleep without nursing.  She will nurse and then unlatch and try to get herself to sleep.  She has only actually gotten to sleep by herself a few times, but the fact she is trying is a good thing.  She is also starting to like to have a stuffed doll in bed with her…usually the Raggedy Ann doll made by my aunt who made me one just like it that was my faithful friend in childhood. 
• She is starting to carry around stuffed animals/dolls and is  partial to Zane’s Curious George monkey and his Mickey/Minnie Mouse (although we are starting to keep those in Zane’s room because he is growing posssesive of those two things).  She has a llama and dolly that she also carries around at times.
• The words that are clear and consistent include:  Mama, Dada, ball, tree, book, tv and “ut’s at”  (what’s that?).  There are a lot of times she seems to say other words too, but they aren’t quite clear enough or they aren’t used enough for them to have solidly made it into her vocabulary yet.  (we think she is calling Zane bru-bru, but haven’t heard it enough yet to be sure we aren’t just hearing things)
• She has been waving both hello and goodbye for a while.
• Goes up the stairs pretty quickly now.  She doesn’t alternate which foot is first like we do, but she does lead with one leg for several steps, then the other leg for a few steps.  To go down she backs up onto the stairs and slides down on her belly, catching herself with her hands to slow her progression.  She can go down faster than we can walk down going that way and I am concerned she is going to get rug burn on her tummy if she goes any faster. 
• She kisses people.  Mostly open mouth, but she is starting to try and pucker within the last day or two.
• She sees us blowing on food to cool it and will imitate it.
• Absolutely insists on feeding herself.  Although she will still use toddler silverware, if anybody around her has grownup silverware, she wants that instead.  Really tries to eat everything with silverware initially, but will resort to fingers if it is going too slowly and she is hungry.  Will run to her booster seat and try to scale the chair to get up into it on her own we she sees/hears that we will be eating soon. 
• With a crayon or sidewalk chalk she mostly just jabs at paper/sidewalk.  She can draw a line, but it is not controlled at all yet.  She is nowhere close to where Zane was at this point with drawing skills.
• Turns anything with buttons (remote control, calculator, play radio and phone) into a telephone and walks around looking very business like as she chatters away while talking on the phone.  She is always wanting the “real” phone, but if somebody actually talks to her on the other end (like grandma) she gets the most shocked look on her face and then tries to press the buttons.  lol.
• Still loves books.  Sometimes she will listen quietly to the whole story, but most of the time she does not have the patience to sit there.  Getting mom to read as many books as possible, even if it is just 3 pages, seems very important to her.
• Any time music plays, including things like jingles, she starts dancing.  She has done that pretty much since birth.  It is like she is incapable of being still at all if there is music.  I have seen her start to move her legs to music playing in her sleep.  She is starting to sing along, although about the only thing that is understandable is an adorable E-I-E-I-O during Old Mcdonald has a Farm.
• For the most part she can drink from a small cup.  However, if anything dribbles out of her mouth (which is still likely to happen), she will pull the cup away and try to rub the water spot off her shirt or lean down to ‘clean up’ the spot on the floor.  When she does this, she forgets she is holding a cup of water in the other hand and spills it out, and then notices that and gets really upset because the water is all gone and she doesn’t seem to make the connection that she is the one that spilled it out.  She gets so frustrated.
• Starting to enjoy “helping” to clean surfaces with towels/rags and will randomly put things away.  She doesn’t understand where to put things though, so we find lots of things in really odd places.
• The girl has a pretty good throwing arm.  A few days ago, after her brother sat on her (and was told to get off of her), he got up and she picked up a block and threw it at him, landing on his shoulder and leaving a mark.  She was not pleased when we removed her from playing for doing that.  lol.
• She is starting to kick balls too.  She sort of has a Charlie Brown thing going on, but she is making contact more times than not now.  She also discovered she could walk backwards and does that occasionally. 
• She is starting to follow directions and responds to her name and simple directions to a degree that just takes us back.
• She has her front 8 teeth (4 on top, 4 on the bottom) and we see one of the molars poking through her gums in the last few days.  It looks like some more are coming too.
• Stranger anxiety doesn’t seem to be going away yet. 
• The behavior issues we are having with her are a serious whine, a screech when she isn’t getting her way, and throwing things.  She also really makes us work to enforce boundries with her.  She really, really hates the word “no” with a red hot passion.  lol.