Well another month has gone by and my tiny baby is suddenly 18 months old!
After taking a few tiny steps 10 days ago, she’s decided not to bother any more with that walking business for the time being. But she’s spending more time standing without holding on to anything, and has recently taken up walking like a crab with her bottom high in the air, which is very funny to watch. She can climb up a gently sloping slide and at least 3 stairs, and can come down 3 stairs backwards too. She’s pretty good about turning around and coming down backwards from any sort of step or higher level (such as our bed). She does a lot of reasonably accurate pointing, and will occasionally wave bye bye (but usually not when someone is actually leaving!)
We’ve started baby swimming (synchronised splashing) classes and after 3 classes she’s just starting to relax a little and not cling to me like a limpet for the duration. I hope she’ll start enjoying it soon, as I love being in the water myself. At the moment she uses a little rubber ball as a security toy.
Her favourite activities are going on the swing and reading books. She is particularly fond of books with flaps. She also loves balls, balloons and bubbles, and taking a bath (not to mention her bath toys). I can see a bit of a B theme emerging here! She has also grasped the concept of putting pieces into a simple jigsaw (no interlocking pieces) but doesn’t have the dexterity to complete it by herself. She enjoys posting items into a home-made shape sorter, and playing with pegs. She starts and responds to games of peekaboo - it’s the easiest way to put a smile on her face.
Her spoken language is really minimal - lots and lots of fantastic babble but probably only 3 actual words; “boo” which means both ball and balloon, “woo woo” which means dog (woof woof), and “gat” or “tat” which means cat, cow, bird, elephant, giraffe or any other random passing object which is not a woo woo. Nothing to indicate mum or dad!! She can also indicate milk via sign language. STOP PRESS! Two days after I drafted this post she started using a new word: “dut” for duck.
However her understanding of new words is growing rapidly. I can ask her to find a particular toy (eg ball, balloon, peter rabbit, snugglebunny, etc) and she will go and look around the room and (mostly!) find the thing I ask for. The other day I said “where’s the Maisy book?” and she went to a stack of books and found the Maisy book which hidden underneath another book. (I was so impressed!!!) She has several “that’s not my XXX” books and they all have a mouse on each page. Now all she wants to do is point at the mouse when I read those books. Then today (gotta love this) I was reading a different book which also had a small mouse on one page. I said “Talia, where’s the mouse?” and she looked at the page but she couldn’t see the mouse, so she crawled over to That’s not my Dinosaur” and pointed out the mouse on the cover of that book instead!! She can also point out flowers and other objects she knows the name of when I ask her where they are. Even though I know it’s normal, I find it really quite amazing that she understands so much more than she can say.
Eating is still patchy, with the same problems of “loved it yesterday, hate it today, don’t even bother tomorrow”, but she’s continuing to gain (and grow out of things) despite the fact that she’s almost 100% self fed on finger food and I’m no closer to getting her to eat off a spoon, regardless of whether I’m holding it or she is. On the positive side, we can feed her a little bit of whatever we are having and no longer have to rely on food organised specifically for her (although we still do to some extent).
She will sometimes allow us to brush her teeth but it does take quite a bit of persistence. She sleeps well overnight and has one nap in the middle of the day, usually 1-1.5hours long. I wish she’d sleep longer but no luck so far - her room is probably not dark enough.
We’ve just come back from a short trip to visit family in Sydney, and she was marvellous apart from the flights - she threw up on both of them (eeeewwwwww) and also threw the most ENORMOUS tantrum on the way back - easily the worst behaviour in her entire life. I did feel very sorry for the people sitting around us! Then she did a similar thing before we put her to bed. I know she was tired but this was so over the top… I think the “terrible twos” may have arrived early.
Last but not least, her latest statistics: 9.335kg and 74cm in length. Something above the 10th percentile in both cases. She is now in size 0 clothing, size 1 if it’s an all-in-one including toes.
Both parents are very proud!!
