Abigail: 15 months

I am not doing monthly posts anymore but I did want to do a quick snapshot of Abigail at this age as she is so much fun and changing so fast!

Eating:  Abigail continues to be a great eater. She loves fruit and eats most of what we eat most of the time. She had a week or two recently that it seemed like she was eating everything, but has slowed down now. We are not sure if that was a quirk and this is now normal, or if this is a slowdown, or if normal is somewhere in between. She continues to gain weight and seem happy so all is well.

She continues to have whole milk during the day and nurse morning and evening. This is working out pretty well.  She has also been obsessed with drinking from a cup and agitates to try my juice cup every morning at breakfast. She is getting better at drinking small amounts, but figuring out the correct angle to tip the cup is tricky!  We are going to work on giving her smaller glasses to practice with, although she likes to be just like us.

Sleeping:  Over the past few months we have been working on not nursing during night wakeups and this has led to some improved sleeping, although there are always ups and downs.  At night, Abigail often sleeps from 7 or 7:30 until 6-something, but we have had a disturbing recent trend of pre-6 am wakeups.  Abigail is taking a consistent after-lunch nap at both school and home, sometimes up to 2 hours at school and usually 60-90 minutes at home. As long as she wakes up happy, we just go with it.

Playing:   Abigail loves to play outside and enjoys exploring our complex and the local parks. We often go out searching for the many random cats that live in our complex and Abigail is quite adept at spotting them and making cat noises.  The cats are becoming more cautious of Abigail as she gets bigger and faster but seem somewhat bemused by her interest.  Abigail loves the swings at one of the parks near us, and also likes to go down slides.  She is friendly and interested in other kids at the parks and at school, and is a good sharer so far. She is curious about other kids' toys but will quickly give them back if asked and likes to play sharing games. This will likely change as she gets older but we will enjoy it while it lasts. 

Abigail continues to enjoy putting things in and out of containers and loves to read books. She has a fairly long attention span for books and likes to hear the same one over and over at times. 

 (helping daddy water the yard)

She is starting to be very interested in mimicking what JP and I do and "helping" us whenever possible.  For example, she will happily carry an empty cereal box with me to the recycling bin outside while I carry the rest of our container. She likes to help put the groceries away by carrying stuff from one of us at the counter to the other one at the fridge, and so on and so on.  She even tries to carry her daycare bag even though it is almost as big as she is!  We are learning ways to use this to everyone's benefit, such as distracting her by asking her to help put her socks away when she is fussy about something.  

Growth:  We had a doctor's appointment in March for a well check and Abigail is now 31" tall and 22 1/2 lbs.  These are both in the 60somethingth percentile for her, although I feel like she is taller than that.  The doctor was happy with her growth and we have no concerns.

We have started to pack away more and more of the 12 month clothes and are now in mostly 18 month outfits with a few 12 month favorites sticking around. Abigail has some super cute summer clothes from her older cousins that are waiting for the weather to warm up just a little more, so that will be fun!

Abigail's hair is really growing too! She really enjoys putting bows in it although they don't often last that long.  School still likes to do ponytails but they don't stick up quite as much. She is funny because she will leave the bows in for me pretty well but according to her teacher, after I drop her off she just pulls them out and tries to eat them.  She will mostly leave the ponytail holders in for them but when she gets in the car and sees herself in the mirror, she often will immediately reach up and pull out her hair tie and try to eat it!

The last few months have also seen the number of teeth Abigail has double from 6 to 12!  It felt like she had six teeth forever--4 on top and 2 on bottom.  Eventually she began to teethe the lower left front tooth, and I kept checking for the other one but it did not show up.  One day I reached back farther and found her molars starting to bulge under her gums. After those four all showed up in the span of a few weeks, the last bottom front tooth slowly is making its way out into the world.  She likes the idea of brushing her teeth, and likes to play with her toothbrush, but usually fusses when I actually do it, unfortunately.

(you can see her three bigger bottom teeth in this picture)

 Communication:  Abigail understands so much it is really incredible.  Her receptive language is great, and it feels like she understands just about everything we say.  If we ask, her, she can identify her nose, eyes, mouth, ears, hair, belly, hands and feet.  She continues to add some signs to her repertoire, so she can now sign: more, all done, milk, eat, please, elephant, and I think bird.  Her clearest phrase is still "all done", and she also says: yes, no, dada, mama, banana, apple, dog, and up.  She is beginning to babble "ma ma ma" more consistently for me, milk, and more. 

When we ask her, she will tell you that dogs say "raf raf raf", that dinosaurs and lions say "roar", and that owls say "hoo hoo". She has a great noise that cats make that is not "meow" but is quite distinctively the cat noise.

(giving the dog a high five!)

She can point to herself when we ask where Abigail is and identifies herself in the many pictures we have of her around the house. She has a great memory for things and is always impressing us with the new things she knows.

We are really enjoying her right now!   We can't wait to see what the next few months bring!