Katherine is 15 months old!

Wow how the time flies! Our baby is now a full blown toddler and keeping up with her high energy is getting more and more challenging. We just had a well appointment at her pedi's office so I have some updated info. Here is what she has been up to lately.

Stats:

Height: 32 inches (around 85%)

Weight: 23lbs 12oz (around 63%)

She is still long and lean.

Also, we have 10, maybe 11 teeth. All 8 front ones, then top and bottom molar on the left and I think the top molar on the right. She won't let me poke around long enough to confirm.
She wears size 12-18m clothes (though I buy a lot of 24m too so they can last her through the fall). Shoe size 3. Diaper size 4 (she's been in this size forever even though in theory she just now reached the weight limit. I like the extra absorbency).

At our appointment the doctor went over several milestones and she either meets or  exceeds all of them. Yay!

Personality:

If I were to describe this girl in one word it would definitely be 'adventurous' with an exclamation mark! This kid never sits still! She is always on the go, getting into new places, exploring new toys, objects, places and activities. She is sooo curious about everything and loves to watch us do different things and then repeat what we do. Her physical abilities are amazing. She has been pretty mobile for a long time, climbing up and down ramps and stairs at home and at Gymboree. But when she started walking in mid April things became a whole new ball game. Good luck keeping up with her now. We run laps around the house all the time! 

She is really brave and typically not scared of people or places. Recently she started clinging to us in certain situations. According to her doctor that's a perfectly normal developmental phase and a sign of preservation instinct. She was super scared when we went into the doctor's office. She was also really clingy when a guy came to our house to give a quote on a project. But if there are babies or animals around, she just starts running forward and acts like her normal confident self. We hope she stays so brave and confident when she grows up.

She is a total outdoors kid and wants to play  outside all of the time! She will bring over my shoes from the foyer, then her shoes and hat and will keep saying 'outside outside' until we take her out to the garden or in front of the house to play. If she could she would spend the whole day at the playground swinging, going down slides, throwing herself on a pile of sand (and eating it too!) climbing up and down monkey gyms, or sitting on a bridge high up and putting sticks or wood chips through holes! You know those catwalks at playgrounds...

That brings me to her fine motor skills. She is SO precise! She is usually pretty good about NOT shoving small objects in her mouth, so if I watch her closely I will let her play with the sensory bottles I made for her months ago. We open them, dump everything on the floor and then she puts the pieces back in, one by one. Then dumps them out again and puts them back in. We have a bottle with rubber erasers, one with jingle bells, one with fluffy pom poms, one with tic tacs. And as I said, outside, she loves putting sticks through holes. I think the water meter at the end of our driveway is now half way clogged with pine straw and sticks she shoved in there...

Two random milestones the doctor asked us about (and she reached): she draws on the sidewalk with chalk and tosses the ball when you tell her to. 

She's a little copy cat and learns new things sooo fast! 

Speech:

At this age kids are expected to be able to say mama, dada and 3 other words. Well, this girl says a WHOLE BUNCH of words. Mama and dada of course. Up, down, hi, ball, bird, bear, bubble, button, bam! (when something falls down), bounce, bow (as in hair bow), tree, apple, open, go, hat, cou cou (french for peekaboo, that's what we've been using all along), uh-oh!, and her absolute favorite: outside! 

In addition to that she has a bunch of her own words which she has been using for a long time. She still says 'aff aff' for dogs, but also 'quack quack' for duck, 'brrrroom brrrom' for cars, 'bzzz' for bee and butterfly, 'glub glub' (sounds like clicking) for fish and clicks her tongue for horse. Oh and since she's been riding our neighbors' cow so much, she also says 'moo' for that now.

Also she has a word for hungry (am am) and thirsty (smacking sound) so we always know when she needs something. She is such a good communicator! It really makes taking care of her easier.

Aside from spoken words she also uses many signs, ASL and her own, made up. She signs 'milk', 'more' and 'all done'. Those were the only ones I really cared about and she is using them all the time.
I especially love that she uses 'more' and 'all done' in all situations not just for food. For example when she's playing with her sticks and wants me to hand her some because she's running out of them, she will sign for 'more'. And when we're at the swings and she wants to come down she either says 'down' or signs 'all done'. Love it!

She has her own sign for sunglasses, hat and phone.

Oh and she started saying 'Piper' which is the name of her little friend from the gym child watch room. They play there almost every day. She will say Piper all the way we're driving down to the gym in the morning.

She is really good at imitating what we say and loves to copy us. One day we were looking at something on the computer and I said we need to google it, then CJ said yeah let's google it. And all of a sudden she says 'google!' in her cute little voice! It was hilarious!

She has been waving hi and bye and blowing kisses for months and has been pointing to multiple body parts since she was 12 months old. She knows some shapes too. Not the normal ones though haha. She knows star, heart and moon.

Activities:

We keep a very busy schedule around here. Every morning after breakfast we head over to the gym. I work out and she plays with other kids. Then on Mondays and Wednesdays we go to the library to baby story time. On Wednesdays and Fridays she goes to her Gymboree classes (Music is one of them and the other is Play & Learn) and on Thursdays we also go to open play gym at Gymboree. All other time is spent playing at all of our local parks and playgrounds or at home. We also meet up with our neighbors and their kids for impromptou play dates in the yard.
 

Every now and then we run over to the Discovery Place or go swimming in the afternoon. And now with the weather getting so warm we will definitely start going to the outdoor pool.

 

Playtime:

Katherine's toys took over the entire house... She has several play stations set up through out the house downstairs and up, which is great because she can play with different things in different areas and doesn't get bored. She loves anything with buttons that plays music (she has 4 phones, toy tablet, books with buttons that play songs and sounds etc). She still loves her Fisher Price bucket of blocks and now puts them through the holes instead of dumping them out. She plays with several musical instruments. Also she pushes around her little shopping cart full of plastic food and a push walker we borrowed from friends. 

She loves sitting in (or rather climbing in and out of) her little arm chair and playing with kitchen things in her 'safe' cabinet. Recently she became fascinated with the pantry. She'll go in there to stack cans, bang in empty containers or just hide. She pulls the door closed and giggles like a mad woman. So funny!
 

Schedule:

I guess I should mention that too, right? Typically she sleeps till 7-7:30 but can wake anywhere between 6-8. If she wakes early we don't go in to get her till 7. She just plays in her crib and talks to herself. 

She then gets dressed and has breakfast. Usually oatmeal with fruit, followed by milk and some dry cereal if she wants it.

Then we're out and about. She gets a snack or goldfish crackers or yogurt with fruit or veg around 10-10:30.

Lunch is usually at noon. She will eat turkey and cheese slices, toast, PB&J, quesadilla, scrambled egg or leftovers.

Then between 12:30-1pm she goes down for a nap. She's been taking 1 nap/day for the past 2 months. She sleeps anywhere between 1-2 hours. I wish it was 2 hours consistently as I know her body needs it, but she doesn't always sleep that long. When she only sleeps an hour, she later gets really tired and cranky. No idea how to make her sleep longer. But the doctor told us not to give in and not to put her to bed early when she does that. She needs to learn to relax and sleep longer. So we're going with that. I actually totally agree with the doc. So glad we have such a great pedi!

After the nap she gets milk and a snack of Nutri Grain bar or ricotta with fruit or veg.

Then it's play time till it's time for dinner. She eats between 5:30-6pm. I will often eat with her because I'm tired and hungry by then. She pretty much eats the same stuff as me. Loves mac&cheese, all veggies, especially green beans, carrots, peas, corn, black beans, black eye peas. She will eat a slab of meat loaf (!!!), meatballs, turkey hot dogs, brats, casserole (off my plate), pasta, fish. She also loves fruit and would eat all berries, peaches, apples or grapes with both hands! She doesn't love some meats (chicken) probably since they are harder to chew. But I followed a friend's tip and let her dip the pieces in ketchup and with that she actually ate some baby nuggets and baked chicken. Oh, she can feed herself with a fork! This is the coolest thing ever. She stabs her food pieces with great precision and sticks the fork right in her mouth.
Here is a short video. It only occurred to me to record it after she's been doing it for like 10 minutes so not the best result but you get the picture.


We don't give her any juice. She likes her water and I don't see any benefit in adding sugar into her diet. She eats plenty fruit and veggies, so no need to resort to juice

Around 6:30 we go up for a bath. She loooves bath time and is so fearless in the tub. She lays on her back with her head halfway in the water, or on her belly and kicks wildly. She will walk from one end to the other and carry her rubber toys. She slipped a few times and scared herself, but right away she was back at it.

Then we drink a cup if milk and read books. She always points to her fave parts and giggles. After that we go to bathroom to brush teeth, and she goes to bed. We put her down around 7pm and she is typically out by 7:15-7:30. She's really good about putting herself to sleep at night. No help required.

Oh she hasn't used bottles since about 2 weeks after she turned 1. At that point we were just doing morning and evening bottle anyway, so we just went cold turkey and she hasn't missed anything.

Brushing teeth was a big deal in the last 3 months. We went from lots of screaming and having to literally sit on her to pin her down to now, her signing and asking for it! What did the trick? Toothpaste!! One day I dipped the tip of her brush, like 3 strands, in some toothpaste, barely to even show, but she instantly loved it! Smacked her lips and let me brush all over. Now she wants to do it all the time! We brush in the bathroom, she stands in a stool and sees  herself in the mirror. I think she likes it because she feels like such a big girl!

We also have a big girl routine for washing hands now. Since she plays outside so much our previous way of cleaning her with wipes was just not cutting it. Plus she now feeds herself by hand so we want to make sure she is really clean. We go to bathroom, she gets on a stool and we wash hands like a  big girl with soap and water. She totally gets it too. It's enough to say 'Katherine let's go wash hands' and she starts heading to the bathroom. Such a smart girl!!

Wow this post got really long. I just didn't want to miss anything for when we look back at things. Every day I am just amazed by how smart she is and how much she understands of what we say to her. I never thought that babies this young could understand so much. I guess I always saw either small babies (aka lumps) and big kids (2+ years old). She's right in the middle and her comprehension and reactions are just so amazing to me. Not because she's mine but because I find it fascinating that tiny humans can do such cool things at such a young age.