15months

15 Months

Physical Development

This is the month when Etta truly learned to walk. She still crawls about half the time, especially when she wants the benefit of speed, but she is beginning to understand that if she is upright, she has two hands free to carry things around with her.

She cut her remaining baby teeth this month – she now has 16 teeth, a real mouthful for a 15 month old.   She’s really looking like a toddler, and not a baby, with all those teeth. The teething was quite painful at times, evidenced by her persistent fussiness and chapped hands from constant chewing of her fingers. We went through an entire wharehouse-sized bottle of Infant’s Tylenol in just three weeks.

Language Development

Etta remains very interested in being read stories, and having the illustrations in her books explained to her. Her favorite word is still "kitty," and it seems to be all she wants to talk about. She understands a lot more than she’ll say – I ask her questions and many times she’ll nod either "yes" or "no" appropriately. (I’ve learned to ask questions that won’t automatically have a "yes" answer). I try to get her to point to parts of her body and specific pictures in her books, by asking, "Where’s…" Unfortunately, after daily practice, she’s only learned two body parts (ear and nose), and will only point to the correct picture in her book if I’ve asked her to find a cat, dog, or bird.

New words: (none this month)

Sleep:

Etta takes just one nap a day now, usually from 2:00 to 4:00 in the afternoon. She wakes around 8:00am, and goes to bed after 9:00pm. If I try to put her down before she is ready, she’ll scream at the top of her lungs and arch her back and flail around for up to two hours! She refuses to go to sleep by herself – if she is not being held then she will keep herself awake, no matter how tired she is, just because she is so angry at being left alone. About half the time I no longer nurse her to sleep. Pregnancy and my weaning efforts have reduced my milk production drastically.

Eating:

After recovering from the stomach flu early in the month, her appetite increased rapidly. She demands to feed herself most of the time, so I’m using up the remaining jars of baby food when she’s in a cooperative mood. She continues to enjoy peas, green beans, chicken, rice, and pasta. Cheese is her favorite food, so I save it for the end of the meal.

I continue offering her cow’s milk from both a cup and bottle, and she always refuses it. She also won’t tolerate any juice added to her water.   I’m not worried about her missing out on the nutrients in milk or juice because she seems to eat a well-balanced diet.

New foods tried this month:

Kosher beef hot dogs, extra sharp cheddar cheese, cooked celery (in a casserole), ice cream

Other Events:

Etta had a bad case of the stomach flu which lasted five days. She vomited more times than I can recall, there was lots of diarrhea, and the washing machine and tub seemed constantly in use. Luckily no one else in the family came down with it, but with my early pregnancy queasiness, there were a few occasions when I was covered head to foot in Etta’s vomit that I nearly had to bend over the toilet myself.

Just before Etta came down with the flu I had successfully weaned her down to two nursings a day, but as soon as I realized how sick she was I immediately flooded my system with water and began nursing her on demand. She refused all food and water for days, only taking my milk, what little of it there was.

Etta had her 15 month exam a week after her bout with the flu and she weighed in at 21 pounds, 6 ounces (she had dropped to 20 pounds 12 ounces when ill). She was nearly 34 inches long, which is the height of the average two year old.

Etta experienced her first snow this month and enjoyed trying to pick it up with her mittened hands.   When we had a second, deeper snow a week later, Etta experienced sledding for the first time. We had a baby sled with a high back so she could sit in it alone without falling backwards. Daddy and I pushed her down and pulled her up the little slope in our backyard, with Etta squealing, "Whee, Whee!" the whole time.