18 Months 23 pounds 34 inches Etta has grown and changed so much in this past month. She now runs at full speed (and always in the opposite direction for some reason), dances anytime she hears music (or any kind of rhythm or even sirens), and climbs up the stairs in the blink of an eye. I take her to the little park nearby and she runs excitedly from one piece of equipment to the next. If I lift her up onto a bouncer or into a swing, she’ll only enjoy it for about a minute, then she calls to get free so she can run off to explore something else. Etta loves to "help" in the garden by climbing up into the raised beds and attacking the soil with a trowel. I bought her a little watering can and she very seriously goes to each pot and sprinkles water on the plants. She likes to collect stones and put them in pots, chase the kitties under the deck, and pick up clumps of grass from around the lawn and build a pile of it on the step. As I attempt to battle the weeds, she notices me "picking" things, so she goes directly to whatever is in bloom and pulls off all the petals. Her fine motor skills continue to amaze me. She’s really enjoying her crayons now, rarely putting them in her mouth anymore. I used to give her blank scrap paper to color on, but this month I discovered that I could print black line drawing "coloring sheets" of her favorite television characters from the Internet. Just days after introducing her to these, my husband and I were started to watch her singling out a bear from amongst other characters on the page, and very carefully coloring it in green. It was as if she were really trying to stay within the lines. She can build a tower of blocks 10 pieces or higher. She continues to stack them until the tower topples, then she starts again. Her movements are very calculated and precise, and yet at the same time it appears so easy for her. She can also do a 12 piece puzzle (each piece in its own hole, not interlocking), without any assistance. Language Development Etta’s vocabulary continues to hover around 12 words, although her comprehension has improved markedly. She can point to most of her body parts when I say their names, and can retrieve specific items from her toy shelf when I ask. Eating: Etta is fully weaned now, no longer breastfeeding at all. She happily takes a 9 ounce bottle (of half soy milk, half whole cow’s milk) two or three times a day. Last month she would ask to nurse a few times a day, mostly when she was bored or overtired. I’d let her have a suckle occasionally, although she never stayed on for long and pulled off immediately if I mentioned a bottle, which she found much more satisfying. She’s been off jarred baby food for a couple months now and I’m at a loss on how to provide her with the nutritional variety. It was so easy back then – I just went to the pantry and picked out a jar of vegetables, one of fruit, another of lentil or chicken, and supplemented her meal with some fresh yogurt or cottage cheese. She ate a full spectrum of jarred vegetables, from squash to green beans, with her favorite being spinach potato. Now that she eats finger foods, the only vegetables she’ll eat are peas and green beans. Sometimes I add very finely grated carrot to her pasta, but I can only add the smallest amount or she’ll reject the whole meal. She’s totally dependent on me to provide her with a balanced array of foods, but sometimes I feel like I’m in such a slump of food jags myself, that I really struggle to come up with new meal ideas for her. New foods tried this month: Garden fresh slug (it was barely bigger than a grain of rice, and I got it out of her mouth before she swallowed it). Gelatin, shrimp, scallops, halibut Other Events: While running in the park she got her first skinned knee. She hopped up immediately to continue on her way, but then felt the pain and grabbed her knee, and screaming, threw herself down again in a tantrum. It was as if she was insulted by the injury and had to throw a tantrum to protest it! |
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| Screaming one minute, laughing the next... a toddler's life is full of emotion as well as motion! |