Katherine is 18 months old!

Actually, she is already 19 months old but I am super slow in posting an update about her. I had this entire post written a while ago but didn't have a chance to get to my laptop to attach photos. It's not the easiest thing done on an iPad or iPhone which I routinely now use to blog... So this will be an 18 month post updated with some 19 month comments since there is some additional info I want to include.


Hooray for 1.5 years! That's right - our munchkin is already a year and a half!! Time is going by so so fast with her around!

Stats:
On August 19th we had our scheduled doctor appointment and Katherine's stats came in as follows.
Height: 33 1/4 inches (92%)

Weight: 25lb 4oz (68%)

Still long and lean and staying right on her curve!

She got one catch-up shot at the appointment and only cried for a second. Right away she was ready to play again and check out the plush monkeys they have hanging in the hallway.

She is in size 18m pants and 24m to 2T shirts.

Size 4 diapers and size 5 shoes.

She has 12 teeth, we've been at that number for a long while now so I am expecting the canines to show up soon. She's been giving us grief about brushing lately (normally she loves it) and I'm wondering if maybe she has sore gums from new teeth getting close to poking through. She won't let me look though so I can't be sure.

UPDATE: I am pretty sure she has the top left canine out and both bottom ones are about to break through. She won't let me look inside but I think I saw a tooth when I was tickling her and hanging her upside down one day. And the bottom ones you can see when she's smiling. They're about to break through. They are affecting her eating and sleeping a little. We administer Baby Tylenol on an ongoing basis here now...

Personality:

She is such a fearless explorer! This has not changed since the last update. She loves to go places and see things. She has such an incredible amount of energy that it is really hard to keep up with her. She's on the go from the moment she wakes up to the moment she goes to bed at night.

Also she is a total chatterbox! When she was about 15 months she started this funny babbling that sounded like she was having a cnversation with you. And that was in addidion to saying real words. As of 18 months she knows close to a hundred words. One of her favorites is NO. She says that A LOT, whether she means it or not. She still uses her ASL signs but at the same time says the correct words for them, more, milk, all done, etc.

UPDATE: She now uses all correct words and rarely does the ASL sign anymore.

She knows all her animal sounds (you all saw the chatty videos) and is totally in love with animals. She gets super excited when she sees them outside or on tv. We are planning a trip to the Zoo soon so she can experience more stuff besides cats and dogs in real life.

UPDATE: In addition to the sounds she now also calls animals by the correct names.

She is super affectionate and gives us kisses and hugs all the time. She also kisses all her toys and items she likes at home. She loves the picture of a baby on her diaper cream tube and routinely kisses it every time I change her.

UPDATE: We switched back to Pampers diapers recently and she now specifically requests which character diaper she wants (Elmo, Cookie etc)

She always shares food and milk with her stuffed animals and dolls. Every time she eats something she makes sure to give some to her friends. So cute!

I am constantly amazed at how smart she is and how fast she's catching onto things. Her memory is also amazing. I thought she would have forgotten about the beach and ocean by now, but one day I had House Hunters on when I was making dinner and all of a sudden she starts yelling 'Aba! Aba!' which was her word for 'ocean'. I look up and sure enough there is a shot of a beach and ocean. Oh, she now actually says 'ocean' the proper way... 

One weekend a bird got into our garage and wouldn't leave till 2 days later so every time we went in she would point to it and say 'bird' or 'tweet'. And after it finally left, she still kept asking about it. So I told her that the bird went 'bye bye' and now whenever we pull into the garage she says 'tweet' and I'll say, 'yeah, where is the birdie?' And she'll say 'bye bye'. Too cute. 

And one more story. After our beach vacay she was super interested in rocks. One day when we were walking into our gym she picked one up and I made her leave it by a tree by the door. And for like 2 weeks she kept pointing to the spot and asking 'rock?'. It's incredible. I didn't realize that babies remembered stuff so long. 

She loves playing with other kids. She gets ridiculously excited about her little friends. Her faves are Emery, Kate, Hailey and Hannah. She says their names and gives the biggest smiles. She gets especially excited about Emery. One day when Emery came here with her parents and played in Katherine's room and bonus room, for days after, Katherine would point to the places where Emery sat and say 'Ememy! Ememy!' 

She is very interested in babies and always points to them and says 'baby' but she loves bigger kids more, because they can do so much more! At our Gymboree playgym other moms have agreed that Katherine needs a sister. But a BIG sister so she can copy her... Hahah...

She loves it when playing involves taking turns. She will say 'Mama! Mama!' And pull me by the hand so I have to do something. And then she will push me away and insist 'Baby! Baby!', meaning herself.

UPDATE: She still calls herself Baby but can now say 'Ka-syn'.

She loves books with a plot. Her fave is 'Corduroy'. I kind of made up the words for it and every time she 'reads' it by herself she says 'No, no!' on the page where the mom tells the little girl she can't have the bear.... We've also noticed that she will now trade bedtime cuddles for reading more books. We went from doing two books to four or five and then just a tiny cuddle. She loves her books.

We recently set up a play station for her in our bonus room, with a toy kitchen, a princess tent and a little table and chairs for crafts. She's been asking to go up there and 'draw draw' all the time! She will sit and draw, color and play with stickers for hours. And she loves playing tea party, pouring tea, pretend eating cookies and cupcakes and feeding her animals. 

She still loves playing outside. We have to put the clip on insect repellent on her if she steps outside for even a minute because mosquitos love to eat her. It's not enough to spray her all over. They will sit on her face and even by her eyes where I can't spray and bite her there. It is infuriating. But so far the Off clip ons have been pretty effective and the nice thing is you don't stink like bug spray later...

Oh she has also thrown some pretty awful tamtrums in public... She has thrown herself on the ground at the grocery store and at church, as well as kicked and screamed and climbed out of the shopping cart seat during shopping trips. it was not pretty I am currently reading a toddler parenting book on how to deal with that because I am not a big fan of hers when she's that way. But I don't want to dwell on the tantrums too much because overall she is a really good kid. 

Speech:

As I mentioned earlier she is a complete chatterbox. She says close to a hundred words which includes animal sounds. She's picking stuff up really fast now, sometime 2-3 words in one day. I am running out if ideas how to teach her new wrds. When I ask her to say something she usually tries to repeat it, and as time goes on she gets more and more precise at first try. I was keeping a list of her words until 18 months but I had to stop because I couldn't keep track of everything she is learning so fast.

She's not putting words together yet really, with the exception of maybe 'wash hands' and 'wov woo' (love you).
Oh and every now and then 'mama help'.

Overall she's an excellent communicator though. 

UPDATE: About a week or so after she turned 18 months she totally started putting words together and now does it all the time! 'Mama help' was the first step. Then it was everything 'Mommy sit!', 'Baby happy', 'Doggy sleep', 'Bear sad', 'Daddy's shoes' 'Come on' 'Go up' etc etc... All the time.

Oh around the same time she also all of a sudden switched to calling us Mommy and Daddy instead of Mama and Dada.
She can copy pretty much any word you tell her and if you show her something and say the name she'll remember right away. I taught her the word 'chest' one night after bath and she immediately filed it in her head and the next day knew exactly what I was talking about. She learns amazingly fast!
 

Activities:

Still pretty similar to what we were doing as of the last update. Gym daycare in the morning during the week, Gymboree class, Gymboree playgym, library story time, park/playground, Discovery Place Kids, pool and splash pad at the Village, playdates every now and then. Staying busy.

As far as playing, she loves to draw, do puzzles, put different shape blocks in slots, plays with her doll house, loves dumping out small beads, erasers, bells, pasta, then putting them into bottles, cups or hiding them underneath cups. She loves being outside and playing with her sand table. She loves the swings and slides, and finally started liking walking down the street on her own. She likes collecting rocks, sticks and acorns.

Also she loves pointing out airplanes, buses and trucks. She recognizes each one by sound perfectly.

She's a huge fan of Curious George, Bubble Guppies and of course Elmo (she also loves Abby and Cookie - that's what she calls him... haha)

Schedule: 

Pretty much the same as before. She wakes up anywhere between 6:30-7:30, but I don't go in to get her till 7:30 and she just stays quiet in her crib and talks to herself and giggles. 

Then it's breakfast of oatmeal with fruit and milk.

Then we go off to the gym. On the way out she gets a snack of goldfish crackers or a cheese stick. 

Then lunch is about 12-12:30. 

She naps from about 1-3 most days, on a bad day she will sleep an hour and then I have to deal with a crabby baby late in the day. 

After nap she gets a big cup of milk and later some fruit or yogurt.

Then we have more play till dinner (at 6:30)

Most of the days her bedtime gets pushed back to 7:30 now because she plays so much and has so much fun. She eats with me and the same things as I am all the time. There are days when she refuses to eat either lunch or dinner and we leave her alone because we know that she will catch up at the next meal. Plus it's not like she is underweight or undersized in any way. She's a great eater. And none of this interferes with her sleep. 

She really acts like suck a big girl now. She wants to do everything we do, she refused to sit in her high chair so we had to install a booster seat on one of our kitchen chairs and now she behaves and eats so much better. 

She picks out her own shoes to wear and insisted on carrying her own bag when we go to the gym.

We both keep saying gosh this is such a fun age. It really is getting more and more fun as the child is growing up. Every night before we fall asleep we list all the cool and new things Ktherine did that day or recently and we thank God for her. We are so happy to have her as our child.