Little A is 18 Months!

 

Our photo shoot was kind of difficult. All she wanted to do was get the camera. :)  But, we did get a couple cute ones.

Little A is such a sweet, beautiful girl. We are so grateful that we have her in our lives. She brings us so much joy. She makes us laugh every day. It has been such a pleasure to watch her grow, learn, and discover.

She said her first phrase! She was pooping, and she tends to get distracted and stop before she's done; then I end up changing two poopy diapers in a row. So, I kept asking her if she had more poop and to "get it all out". Eventually she looked up at me and said "I got it out!" Ha! So funny! It sounded like "I aw i ow" (she said all of the vowels and none of the consonants). She was very proud of herself!

She is a very snuggly girl. She loves to snuggle and give hugs and kisses. She really likes to snuggle her stuffed animals and blankets. One of her favorite games right now is for her and I to take turns snuggling a stuffed animal.

She is very good at sharing and rarely gets upset if another child takes a toy from her, but she struggles with being soft. She likes to give "love pats" to people. Unfortunately when she gets excited they get really hard really quickly. We'll continue to work on it.

No one told me about the 18 month sleep regression. Eesh. It was bad. She has always been a really good sleeper and then suddenly at 18 months (almost to the day) she stopped sleeping. She would wake up screaming mad. She wasn't scared or sick, just really angry that she was in her crib. We would find her standing up, wide awake, yelling at the top of her lungs. As soon as we took her out of her room she was fine and wanted to play. Allan and I took turns for a week sleeping with her on the couch. Then we decided to put our rocking chair in her room so that we could stay in her room and she wouldn't think she could come out at night every time she cried. It lasted for about a month and then she started sleeping 14 hours at night instead of 12! However, she wakes up about 4:30 every morning and plays in her crib for about 30 minutes, so I think she's sleeping the extra 2 hours to make up for the interruption in the middle of the night.

For those who don't know what the 18 month sleep regression is, the few things I read said that for some children at 18 months if they were a good sleeper they will start waking up at night again, and if they still haven't slept through the night they will start sleeping through the night. It lasts for a month or two and then they will go back to their old schedule.

This is how our photo shoot ended: little A throwing the bunny and knocking over the picture frame in excitement.

Little A has had several ear infections since we moved in January (4 or 5). The doctor thinks that she gets them when she is teething. Since she has almost all of her teeth he wants to wait to consider tubes. Then when she's done teething we can see if she still gets infections. We are happy to wait.

The last time she was weighed, which was a couple of weeks ago, she weighed 20 lbs 6 oz. I don't know how tall she is though.

Her favorite food is BBQ sauce. Ha! She loves it, on pretty much anything. I couldn't get her to eat one day so I finally gave her a corn dog (she'll usually eat those), and she still wouldn't eat. So, I dipped the corn dog in BBQ sauce. She sucked the BBQ sauce off of each bite and spit the corn dog out! Funny girl.

Her favorite toys are books. She loves to flip through the pages, have me read to her, chew on them, and give her favorite pictures kisses. We got her a book about pottys to help prepare her for potty training. She loved it so much she took it to bed with her and looked at it in her crib for about 30 min. (I know because I kept checking on her until she finally went to sleep.) There is a page in the book that shows the parents shouting "Hurray", she likes to give this page a lot of kisses.

Her favorite thing to do is walk, holding onto my finger. She thinks it is my job to walk around with her all day. Everything is better with a friend, right?! She also likes to skip, hop, and run.

She likes walking so much that she thought the boy who was passing the sacrament to us was there to walk her. Lol!  We were visiting Allan's family and little A was sitting with her Aunt and Uncle. I looked over after passing the tray to see her holding the hand of the boy! He was not quite sure what to do, ha! We all got a good laugh out of that one!

We sure love our sweet girl!