There have been two big themes this month: your vocabulary and your independence.
You’ve started to mimic us more and more when we speak. Mommy still tries to teach you new signs, and the words to go with them, and it’s super cute when you actually pick them up. One day, you wanted a taste of Mommy’s ice cream, so Mommy said, “Please,” and made the sign for it. And you repeated, clear as day: “Peeeeeze!”
So Mommy gave you a bite of ice cream, then did it again: “Please?” And you reached forward and rubbed Mommy’s chest and said, “Peeeeze?”
Ah, well. You’ll figure it out.
You do have a lot more words in your vocabulary now. You’ve been saying buh-bye, diaper, pee-pee, Mei, meow, and uh-oh for a while. This month, you added bath (speaking and signing), book (also both speaking and signing), bottle, box, eye, and a few others. Unfortunately, anything that starts with a B comes out sounding like “Bah,” so Mommy and Daddy still have to use context clues to figure out what you mean.
You still can’t say ear, but at least you point to your eye when you say eye now.
You understand a lot more words than you can speak or sign. You understand bath, and you get excited about it. You also understand lunch and dinner, and you sign eat when you hear us say those words. When it’s time for bed, you point to your teeth so we’ll take you upstairs to brush your teeth and start the bedtime routine.
Figuring out what you want is sometimes like a game of hot and cold; you point (or even push us) in the direction where you want to go, then we wait for you to point or sign at what you want.
You are obsessed with books lately. You clap your hands together, in the sign for book, and you say, “Bah!” You also like to climb into Mommy or Daddy’s lap when they’re sitting on the floor. That makes you giggle, especially when you bring a book with you to read.
You’ve been paying much greater attention to detail lately, and you tend to want things and see things that we can’t let you play with. You’ve also started trying to fight naptime and bedtime. We think that you’re just trying to test your boundaries, and perhaps approaching the terrible twos a little bit early. Mommy and Daddy are getting good enough at knowing when something’s really wrong — so when nothing’s really wrong, we just leave you in your crib to figure things out. You usually quiet down by the time we get down the stairs.
As a side note: now that we should be weaning you off of it, you finally figured out holding your bottle. If it’s not Quiet Time or Bedtime after the bottle, you like to grab it and squiggle off to drip its remains onto the end table or the couch. Then Mommy will fill up your sippy cup with water and trade you. That usually works.
Let’s see… what kinds of fun stuff did we do this month? Well, I’m not sure if it qualifies as “fun,” but Mommy and Daddy started looking at possible new houses. We want you to grow up in a good neighborhood and go to good schools (and have enough room for three people in our house), so house-hunting is a necessary evil. You did really well the couple Saturdays we all went out together, but Mommy and Daddy are going to leave you with Missy the next time we look at houses.
We also went to Cleveland to spend Thanksgiving with Daddy’s family. You were actually running a temperature the day before, and you threw up an hour or so before we had to leave… but we went, anyway. You slept a little on the way there, but not as long as we had hoped, so you were a little tired and not super peppy, but you still seemed to enjoy yourself. Everyone loved seeing you again!
You weren’t much on the Thanksgiving food, though, surprisingly enough. We brought your highchair, and Mommy made you a small plate of potatoes and green beans and turkey and stuffing, but you didn’t eat much of it. Maybe you just weren’t feeling well.
Mommy and Daddy also put up the (mini) Christmas tree again. We don’t have room for the big one, since your Pack-N-Play lives where we used to set up the tree every year — plus, we’re betting that you’d try to pull it down on top of yourself while we weren’t looking, anyway.
You were too little to appreciate Christmas last year, but we think you’ll have fun with it this year — even if it’s just ripping wrapping paper and playing in boxes.
The pediatrician said at your 15-month visit last week that you weigh 25 pounds one ounce, and you’re 32 inches long. That puts you in the 80th percentile for height, weight, and head circumference — a long way from your teeny 2nd-percentile beginnings, little Squigglebug.
Mommy looked through the Flickr slideshow of her Connor photoset last night. It’s amazing how much you’ve grown and changed over the past 15 months. You’re walking and (almost) talking and developing your own little personality. You know how to swipe from one picture to another on Mommy’s iPhone, and you love to see pictures of yourself. You absolutely crave books. You’re learning so fast!
And you’re cute, too. Who’d you get that from?
