15 Months with C - Ellen Slater

The coolest girl in the world is 15 months old today. I still can’t really get over the fact that she’s a little toddler now. She is so awesome.

My excuses for not doing a 14-month post are very lame and come down to being very tired and first trimester-y. Which I’ll talk more about next week.

C at 15 Months

C is so fun and so funny. She has excellent comedic timing, and makes us laugh every day. I feel so lucky to watch her learn and grow. She has lots of opinions. they include wanting us to build her bites but almost never allowing us to put them in her mouth, wanting to eat an entire bunch of roasted asparagus by herself, and never wanting her diaper changed. But she is very adaptable and the very sweetest. She’s great at playing by herself, and she also loves to engage with us and throw balls, knock over towers, and be chased around the house.

She loves to see what I’m cooking and snack on ingredients, help with laundry and unloading the dishwasher, and undo any attempt at organization she can reach. And she’s getting very tall, so we’re getting used to her being able to reach the edges of the counters now, as well. She has also figured out how to operate doors, so we lock the basement and garage doors and kind of hope for the best with everything else.

We call C our little outside kid because she is always so happy to be outside, and we try hard to get her out for a bit every day. Sometimes this looks like hanging out on our deck for a few minutes around dinnertime, and others it looks like going to the park, walking in the woods, or playing outside and helping me with yard work for hours.

C walks, runs, walks backward, walks sideways, tiptoes, dances, spins in circles, does a lot of squats, climbs up the stairs (and is getting way better at climbing down), climbs onto the couch, gets off the couch, jumps a little, and is startlingly close to being able to somersault independently. She’s a little athlete and she really doesn’t stop moving.

She loves to say hi (and bye) to everyone and everything she sees. One of her favorite activities is pointing to things so we’ll name them and she can say hi to them.

C loves dogs and other animals, dolls, books, pictures, mirrors, music, slides, and anything she can climb. Ben is growing more comfortable around her, and she looks so proud when he lets her pet him, kiss him, or play with his tags.

She loves silly rhyming songs/poems (and she’ll let you know if you’re doing the wrong one), being carried while you run around, and being spun around. We love finding new ways to make her giggle.

C lights up when you clap and tell her she did a good job. She also claps when she thinks she did a good job and to the beat of music. She loves being read to, and especially likes pointing at everything in a book so you’ll tell her what it is.

I truly have no idea how many teeth C has at this point. I know there are a lot, because you can see a mouth full of teeth when she flashes her cheesiest smiles, but she will not let me count just how many molars she actually has. Most of our less-good sleep nights in the last few months can be attributed to a tooth coming through, but fortunately they usually only mess with a night at a time.

Sleep

Bedtime is usually not a big deal. Putting C down usually takes 20-45 minutes, including get her dressed and any story/silly time she wants to have. Many nights, she makes it known that she’s ready for bed as soon as she’s in her pajamas.

Usually, she lets me nurse her most of the way to sleep and then I give her a bottle to finish the job. I switch the bottle up between pumped milk and whole milk, depending on what I have. I’m pumping a little less volume than I used to, depending on the day, so sometimes there isn’t really enough to make a bottle. She’ll often happily take 1.5oz of breast milk after nursing and go to sleep. And she’ll also happily take 6oz of whole milk after nursing and go to sleep. I don’t understand this, but I’m glad she’s flexible. She generally wakes a little in the transfer to her crib and I rub her back and sing to her to resettle her.

When she gets up once during the 4:30-6:30am timeframe, I consider it pretty normal. But many days she doesn’t even do that.

Her sleep has been kind of crazy for the last few months. She decided at some point that her bedtime is between 8:45 and 9:05. And she has very often slept till 10 before I go wake her up.

This has shifted a little (partially intentionally, though I’ve never been all that successful at shifting her bedtime) recently. She went through a bad sleep stretch that I don’t have an explanation last week. She was up 3-6 times a night and then up for good well before 8, despite 9pm bedtimes. And since then, she seems to have sort of shifted back to an 8 or 8:30 bedtime and an 8 or 8:30 wakeup.

Her nap is much less tricky than it used to be, which is extremely nice. It’s finally (usually) a 2-hours-or-longer affair. I don’t always know when it will be since her morning wakeup times have been all over the place, but it’s usually between 1 and 2, and I can typically count on her sleeping a minimum of 90 minutes, and if she wakes before that, she usually nurses back to sleep pretty easily. More often, she’ll sleep for somewhere between two and three hours.

Feeding

C eats very well most of the time, and her stretches of eating less usually coincide with illness or teething. She loves pretty much all vegetables, has recently come around to most fruits, and eats eggs, cheese, and noodles of all sorts very consistently. Meats are a little more hit-or-miss these days, but usually if she takes one bite, she’ll take several more. She just doesn’t always want to try them. She will pretty much always eat a vaguely-Asian-inspired noodle-and-meat-and-veggies dish.

We eat dinner as a family, and C and I eat breakfasts and lunches together, and she snacks within reason. We usually try to avoid big snacks too close to meals, but she does well with veggies or Cheerios as “appetizers.” Some days it seems like she hardly eats anything. Others, I’m shocked that she’s eating so much.

C still loves water but is more curious about other drinks now. She’s tried orange juice and several varieties of milk, but she still favors water. There are worse things.

Schedule

Our schedule has been all over the place with C sleeping in till after 9 so often.

We used to hang out around the house in the morning, but now we are much more likely to get up, have breakfast, clean a little, and go run errands, go outside, or do activities. Sometimes, we have an afternoon play date or swim lessons. In those cases, I try to make sure she wakes up in the morning at a time that will allow an earlier nap. We eat lunch around noon, and then she plays or helps while I clean up. Her nap generally starts between 1 and 2 and ends between 3 and 4:30. After her nap, especially when it’s nice outside, she’s often ready to go out and play as soon as she’s had a post-nap snack. Right now, C nurses about 2 times a day (more when sick, teething, or generally having a hard time sleeping) and I offer 3 meals and 2-3 snacks.

Things I Don’t Want to Forget

How peaceful she looks when she falls asleep on me and how hard she passes out sometimes. It doesn’t always look comfy, but it’s so sweet. She gets really tired now that she’s running all over the place.
A few times, her game of choice in the evening has been to sprint at me and Jack, sitting on the floor, and give us each kisses before running away again and then sprinting back for kisses.
Her little ponytails.
When she wants anything, she signs “please” really, really hard and looks up at you with big brown eyes.

She loves to play with my makeup and clothes while I get ready. This mostly amounts to getting all my stuff out and strewing it across the room, but it’s sweet. Sometimes, she pretends to put various products on herself.
How social she is, especially at Little Gym. At home, she wants everything to do with me and Jack. At Little Gym, she runs off to throw balls / shake shakers / chat with every adult but me (but always checks to make sure I’m watching).
C still loves the tags on her toys and rubbing her fingers on anything that vaguely resembles tags or nubs. She plays with the strings on my hoodies, the extra length on my watch, my hair, the diamond on my engagement ring, and the clip on my bra while she’s trying to fall asleep. She’ll absentmindedly play with the fringe on a blanket or a tag on her toy while she’s playing.
Sometimes she runs around saying “mmmm” and she’s blowing kisses at everything.
Her squeals and babbles. Sometimes they’re happy and sometimes they’re just how she uses her voice, but they are the best.
When she doesn’t want to be put down, she’ll pull her knees into her chest and refuse to put her feet on the floor.
She has the best, most genuine giggle ever.
When I’m laying on the floor in her room or her playroom to read books, she treats me like a jungle gym and climbs and rolls all over me.
When I think she’s tired or it’s time for nap/bed, we’ll ask if she wants “milk and snuggles.” Sometimes, she insists she’s not ready for bed and shakes her head aggressively. Other times, she desperately signs “please.”
She thinks it’s absolutely hilarious when we yawn or fake sneeze, or blow our noses. She also fake coughs every time you cough or sneeze.
When she wants picked up for any reason, she stretches as tall as she can and reaches for you. It’s so sweet and pure. (She has recently added a whine to this move to make it more demanding.)

Things We Use and Love

Pretty much everything from her 2-month post. She doesn’t love the pacifiers except to bite. She has outgrown the Podster, but it served us well when she was teeny.
Pretty much everything from her 3-month post.
Pretty much everything from her 4-month post. We’re done with the weighted sleep sacks, but I’d use them for a future kiddo.
Pretty much everything from her 5-month post.
Pretty much everything from her 6-month post.
The only thing I listed in her 7-month post.
The only thing I listed in her 9-month post.
The only thing I listed in her 10-month post.
The only thing I listed in her 11-month post.
The things from her 1-year post.