18 Months and Counting

Well, once again we’ve hit another monthly milestone with Miss Kamy. How can she possibly be a year and a half old?!? It’s been a whirlwind the last couple of weeks, so bear with me while I try to update you on what all she’s doing and saying.

• At her doctor’s appointment, all looks great!  She had a huge growth spurt in the last few weeks and added nearly 3 inches in height.  She’s up to 32.5″ tall, which puts her in the 70% for her age.  Her weight is up to 22.6 pounds and she’s still a light-weight at 25%.  Everything else looks healthy and good!  Because of her growth spurt, we’re solidly in a mix of 18 month and 24 month clothing and pushing toward size 6 shoes.  She’s wearing a disposable size 3 diaper at nights (to keep her dry) but we’ve moved up to the largest size of cloth diapers for daytime.

• Counting is going really well — she’ll consistently count (correctly!) from one to six and will repeat 7, 8, 9, and 10 after you.  If she’s counting to herself though, it’s all “for, sis, for, sis, for, sis.”  It’s pretty cute!

• Letters are coming along nicely too.  She can identify and say A, B, and C without prompting.  We’re also spending time with her letter puzzle where she matches the letters with an image (ie – F is for fish).  I’d guess she knows 12-15 letters pretty solidly at this point.  McKamy likes to point to the letters on Daddy’s shirts and say them out loud as well.

• Reading is still the best thing ever … hooray!  We have a new favorite book: Dr. Seuss’ Hand Hand Fingers Thumb, a drumming monkey book.  She lost her first copy so Daddy ordered her another one online.  It just came in the mail 2 days ago and it’s returned to it’s favorite status.

• Building on last month’s milestones, she’ll now use “thank you” in context without prompting.  It’s not quite as often as we’re encouraging, but it’s becoming much more common for her to sign it after giving her something that she’s asked for.

• McKamy is really big into collecting and grouping items — especially if they have a designated place where they go.  Books go in the basket or on the shelf when we’re done reading.  Stuffed animals get lined up on the couch, but they nearly always end up back in the big basket in her room.  Water bottles live on her shelf.  She’s also figured out how to use the concept of “more” to mean again, or to tell me she’s going to get another one of a particular item for her collection in progress.  Kamy will also pick up pine cones, acorns, rocks, etc while on her walks or while playing outside and bring them to you to either carry or place.

• Identifying body parts is getting more technical now.  In addition to last month’s abilities, she can point to hair, glasses (and knows the sign for them), nose, mouth, lips, cheek, chin, beard, shoulder, chest, elbow, tummy, belly button, leg, knee, and feet.  We’re running out of distinguishable parts!

• We’re working on learning the actual names for each type of animal, not just their sounds.  She still calls a cat a “meow,” but she’ll repeat “cat” after you if you’re encouraging about it.

• I love McKamy-hugs.  They’re so sweet and I cannot get enough of them.  Assuming she’s in a cooperative mood, she’ll give you a hug pretty much any time and it’ll melt your heart.  Especially since she calls them “huuuuug.”  And hugs aren’t confined to people either — Charley gets his fair share, as do her stuffed animals.

• Kamy also knows that there’s a “beee” in Momma’s tummy.  She’ll give him kisses and hugs and can feel him moving if she’s still long enough for him to kick.  One of the cutest things right now is when we ask her where the baby is.  About half the time she’ll pull up her shirt and look at her belly, say “nooo,” and then point to mine.  It’s precious!

• While we were in DFW last weekend, Kamy had her first trip to the zoo!  I intend on making a separate post for that event, but I did want to mention it here.  She did great and had a wonderful time looking at all the animals.  Her favorite?  The very first thing we saw — flamingos!  They were flapping and walking and talking first thing in the morning and it was so much fun to see her excitement.  She also has a new favorite stuffed animal — her “ah ah” monkey that came from the zoo.  Another tale for another post, but he’s the new favorite.

• “No” is in full swing here in our house.  At first “no” was the default answer for any question from us, but she’s learning context a lot better and she’s getting much more accurate with her replies.  Of course, we’re encouraging her to use “yes” more often than the other choice, but for some reason babies just don’t need to be taught no … it comes with the territory.  Throughout the day we’ll ask her if her pants need to be changed, and more frequently the answer is “yesssss” instead of the flippant “no” (said like she couldn’t care less).  We’re encouraging her to accurately reply too and are mostly taking her answer on whether we change her or not.

• In the last week or so, Kamy’s gotten to where she’ll intentionally smile when you ask her to.  It’s the cheesiest, biggest grin possible and usually comes complete with squinted eyes.  It’s super cute!

• We had our first toddler meltdown on Saturday.  And low and behold, it was over nothing — just needing to change her diaper.  I’d like to think we handled it pretty well by just waiting it out, but we’ll have to continue  to work on our own patience to make sure we stay ahead of her there.  For the most part, we’re doing our best to ignore the behavior we don’t like and make sure that what she’s doing isn’t working at all.  Hopefully that will nip the tantrums in the bud.  Granted, tantrums seem to be a default for toddlers as they learn to exert their independence, but there are extremes to everything and we’re hoping to mitigate the stress.

We love you Kamy-girl.  We’re in the last few days or weeks of just being a family of three.  I’m excited to get Baby Brother here, but we’re super smitten with you too.