BlurbBlog1: 18 Months Old

Our not-so-baby girl turned a year and half old yesterday! We can’t believe it. Penelope is continually amazing us with her growth and development.

New words include “pizza”, “happy” (which she said for the first time on New Year’s Eve because we kept saying “Happy New Year” – it was a great timing and it was shared with Patches and Ellen). She still repeats words and some of them she gets (like “turtle”, although we haven’t heard it since the first time) and others she repeats with the correct number of syllables and the inflection. It’s quite funny. She is also stringing words together such as “hi dada”.

“Nyummy nyummy nyummy nyummy” with hand opening and closing or fork out for more food. Sometimes says "maw" (more).

She says “ta ta” for thank you and gracias. And will say "peese" for please, if asked.

I think she and I had our first conversation…
This past Sunday morning Gabe got Penny when she woke up and I stayed in bed. Once the sleep sack was off, I heard the pitter-patter of her feet running down the hall towards our bedroom (which is a great sound, by the way). She said “hi!” and I lifted her into bed with me. I asked her if she slept well and she said “yea”. I asked if she had sweet dreams, also “yea”. I said “Oh yea? What did you dream about?” Her response: “Da da”. Just amazing.

Penny will now sit for a full book and doesn’t quickly turn the pages, but instead lets you read. She backs up into your lap, it’s a great feeling. She does that a lot now too when we are playing. She likes the lap, and it's fine by me.

She does still want to read the same book repeatedly. When it’s finished and I say “the end” she hands it back to me. I say “again?” and she say “eh heh”.

We had our first trip to Maryland for Christmas.

In Maryland, Penny had her first trip to the Emergency Room, due to her first tantrum. Like every toddler, we have had our moments. Tantrums are not the norm but we’ve had a few.

She just isn’t as malleable as she used to be :), she has an opinion and knows what she wants. We think some if this behavior may also be frustration at not being able to tell us what she wants so...

We are working on our words more. We try not to say “What do you want? You want this?” when she’s whining for something but instead call the items by their names. She understands SO MUCH but can’t yet tell us…. I would be frustrated too :).

She has also started throwing food if she doesn't want it anymore. We'll work on that one too. Meanwhile the Dustbuster is getting a lot of use.

Getting Penny to sit in her car seat has become a challenge. We have to usually bribe her with an iPhone or the DS. We're not ashamed.

We are trying to ween the pacifier. She no longer uses it during the night. We never gave it to her bedtime but we would leave it in the crib before we would go to bed so she could find it in the middle of the night. She also doesn’t get it in the car anymore. We are still using it for naps. We tried to quit cold turkey but the naps were effected so we brought it back and will work on removing it again.

We are also going to try to replace the bottle with a Sippy cup for milk. She already uses a straw cup for water at meal times.

We request a “Kiss on the cheek with lips” and we (usually) get one. What is better than that?

Penny often says "Mommydada" like she knows we are a pair. She'll repeat it a number of times fast. It makes us smile.

She will close a door to a room and say "bye-bye". Sometimes she closes herself in to her bedroom, by herself, if I have forgotten to put the foam piece on the door that stops her from doing so. Then she knocks on the door and I go over and say "Who's in there? Is it Penny" and she says "yea!"

She knows who Elmo is, which I didn't know until she pointed him out to me at Target. I thought that was pretty funny. "Ey(l)mo!". The 'l' doesn't really come through.

She loves "bubbers" and even sang along with the Floating Bubbles Song that came on her Pandora station in the car, before the lyrics started.That might also have something to do with the fact that we listen to her station almost regularly in the car. She's a crank if anything else is played. I think I spoiled her a bit - I turned it on every time she started whining and now she expects it (can't blame her). I'm hoping to maybe alternate 2 of her songs to one of mine. Might start the concept of sharing a little bit too :).

You can see the gears turning when she is playing. Her imagination is kicking in and I can't wait to see what this kiddo comes up with.