Olivia at 15 months

For real, these were the best pictures I could get out of her for both months. Though, to be fair, Serious Face Olivia is pretty adorable.

Nicknames: Ollie, Monkey, Bug, Monks

Weight: 21 lbs, 13 oz
Length: 31 inches
Diaper size: 4
Shoe size/Clothing Size: 3, and now moving into 4 / 12 months, and now wearing some 18 months
Teeth: still the 6

Eating: Still nursing about 5 times a day. She loves bananas, blueberries, Mexican food, cheese, cottage cheese, and my smoothies. I’ve noticed she’s a bit pickier, not really caring about things like her toast like she used to eat a lot of. She still isn’t a fan of meat unless it’s taco meat. Peas? Forget it. Hiding them in mac n cheese doesn’t work either. Her gagging is now a rarity and she is capable of taking down pretty much anything, including lettuce that used to be hard for her. I gave her soup one night, this pumpkin soup with chili cran-apple relish recipe we found (which was delicious with the relish), but let her use the spoon on her own. Ask me how well that went:

Sleeping: In the last update I talked about how amazing her sleep has been. I spoke too soon. She immediately went into a sleep regression where she took an hour and a half to two plus hours to go to sleep. Ironically, she still slept the same amount into the morning which was good for me, but it made us feel bad for her, watching her fussing and rolling around on the monitor. I have to say it’s been the easiest regression by far though. One night, she even slept until 8:20 a.m. and I was convinced she had suffocated because she was all the way pressed along the side of her crib where I couldn’t see her and I was slowly freaking out until she finally woke. But crazy enough, this entire 6 weeks have been her taking quite awhile to fall sleep, save for maybe 20% of the time. I am thankful though that most of the time she is sleeping all the way through the night until 7:00 a.m. (only took 15 months).

Milestones: At 14 months, she was definitely showing signs of a growth spurt with her sleep regression, huge appetite, and loud screams of excitement. (She always tended to become a screamer when she was going through a growth spurt.) She’s definitely starting to imitate us: shutting doors, attempting to put her shoes and hats on, wanting to throw things away into the garbage, or climb into the bathtub. She’ll grab books or her clothes and follow me with them to her room. She’s walking like a boss and they told us she could move out of the “infant/crawler” room and into the “walker” room at church (Noooo!). She gets going pretty fast (hurried walking) and falling doesn’t seem to really faze her. I’ve been trying to work on “taking care” of her dolls, by cradling them, saying, “Look Olivia, the baby loves you!” but she just rips them out of my arms and chews on their fists. We’ll get there. Recently, she’s been obsessed with feeding them. She also has been riding her Little Tikes rocking horse, getting on and off herself.

She’s also reaching up on her tiptoes to get things and walking backwards. I’ve been working with her on ripping paper and using crayons to color (when she’s not snapping off the tips and eating them, that is).

Communication: Probably my favorite thing she’s been doing very recently, is finally making animal sounds after months (and months and months) of Chris and me imitating them. She will “moo,” “roar” (her preferred favorite), bark like a dog and make a monkey sound (though the two are pretty interchangeable). It’s awesome, you guys. She’s still only really saying Mama and Dada, but is definitely more purposeful, as in the one morning I was buckling her into her carseat and she looked out the back window, pointed and hollered out, “Dada!!!” Never mind the person was across the street. And a woman. She’s all about her Dada now. Every morning, the first few days of a new week, she will look around the bed for him and if she doesn’t see him, will point and crane her neck out the bedroom door to see if she can find him. “Dada?” she asks me in the saddest voice and I feel like a jerk somehow for not conjuring him out of thin air. She has also been Very Clear of what she wants by pointing to it passionately and saying, “Eh?” Actually “A-DA!” means “What’s that?” and AH-da!” means “Again!” Honestly, who needs sign language? It’s obviously what she wants. Like when she’s acting like one of “those babies” and pulls my shirt down because she wants to nurse.

Activities: The spring Story Time at the library started up again. I’m finding her having some setbacks in her shyness. In the winter session, she wanted nothing to do with me, finding walking around and playing with books in the middle to be way more fun. Now, she tends to stick by me for awhile until she’s feeling brave.

We checked out one of the nature centers around us one weekend, that had a kids area. She loved it!

ECFE has started up again and she’s now in a class of toddlers ages 12-18 months. It’s crazy how different the class is now that she’s a year old. It’s geared toward prepping for preschool and it’s been an adjustment on both of us. We’re 3 classes in, so we’re getting in a new normal, but it’s been a big change in the way of more structure. She used to ditch with the rest of the babies while we were having circle time, but now is encouraged to stay and participate as evidenced by the increase in TAs who patrol the outer limits to gently herd toddlers back to their parents. I mean, dare I say there’s a bit of pressure to keep your kid from wandering. I mean, you don’t want to be THAT parent with the wandering kid. And there’s a designated snack time, which is just as adorable as it sounds.

I don’t know. It’s something I want to write a future post about. I do think she’s doing wonderful in it and it’s so fun to see her acting like a little girl and not a baby.

Otherwise, we’ve been busying these winter months with walks in the mall or Target, going to the library, and attending a few La Leche meetings.

Health: I’m pretty sure she got a cold from the church nursery after our little hiatus. Because we went on a Saturday night and that Tuesday she woke up with a runny nose and by the afternoon she had a low grade fever. That progressed to 102° by evening and I had to give her Motrin. I went to nurse her again at 9:30 that night because she had woken up (weirdly licking her hands repeatedly and causing me to finally go check on her to see what was going on—which was absolutely nothing, if you were curious. I just have a weird baby.)*** and her fever was completely gone. She recovered completely (save for her runny nose) within two days, so once again, thank you breastmilk. And then sure enough, 3 weeks later, it happened again. I blame the community toys she’s constantly chewing on. This time, while she did develop a fever that night after a runny nose, it went away and she was fine the next day.

She also got her first bad bruise after falling into the corner of a metal bookshelf at the library after Storytime. Did you know coconut oil helps with bruising?

Likes: Walking. Even better if it’s done in public.

She continues to love reading her books more and more. Chris’s parents got her her own magazine subscription, Highlights Hello, and she’s been obsessed. I’ve read those things each no less than 85 times now to her, but seriously, when she looks at you like, “Pwease read this to me, Mama?”… you fucking keep reading it to her.

Riding her little car. She was so scared to climb on anything like this up until she was about 14 months. Then she was all about having us race her around the house with it. We don’t get any squeals of delight, because in true Olivia fashion, she remains perfectly stoic as I fly down the hallway and pretend to crash into the couch, stopping just in time. But she wiggles her butt for me to do it again, so I’m going with the fact that she really likes doing that.

Dislikes: Apparently, the blender and the vacuum now scare the bejesus out of her. Which I’m confused by, because she never seemed to care before. We’re talking the heartbreaking lip pout, and if I can’t make it stop by waving my arms and cheering to show her these scary things aren’t going to eat her up, she opens her mouth and waaaaails. She also HATES when you pick her up to leave when she’s been walking around a store. She threw her first public tantrum in Menards two weeks ago and whew. It was brutal. Girl knows what she wants.

Looking forward to: The weather has slowly been getting warmer. I can’t wait until we can get back to our daily outdoor walks, only this time, she will want to run around the park near our house. It’s actually been really fun walking her to the mailbox and letting her hang out in the driveway with me. All you moms with older kids can laugh at me. I know. It will be different when she’s running.

***UPDATE: My weird baby was, in fact, trying to get rid of one of my long hairs, as evidenced by her doing this again one night while I was nursing her and finally finding a hair entwined around her hand.