My best buddy is 17 months old today. She is so big and capable, and I love her stubborn, smart, adorable self a crazy amount.
C at 17 Months
This is essentially the same as last month because it’s all still so true. C is so fun and so funny. She has excellent comedic timing, and makes us laugh every day. It’s so cool to watch her learn and grow. She has lots of strong toddler opinions, and she makes them known. But she is still very adaptable and the very sweetest. She’s great at playing by herself, and her imagination seems to be going wild right now. I often don’t know exactly what she’s doing when she’s doing her own thing, but it’s fun to watch. She also loves to engage with us and throw/catch balls, wrestle around, play with race cars and her plethora of stuffed animals, knock over towers, and be chased around the house.
She loves to see what I’m cooking and snack on ingredients, help get laundry out of the dryer and unload the dishwasher, guide the vacuum and mop, and undo (or redo) any attempt at organization she can reach.
We call C an outside kid because she is always so happy to be outside, and she gets crabby when she’s been inside too long. Now that it’s getting hotter and she and I both heat up quickly, we end up outside several times a day for shorter spans of time. Sometimes this looks like hanging out on our deck at the water table for a few minutes, and others it looks like going to the park in the morning, walking in the shady woods, or drawing with chalk and helping me with yard work.
Yes, she gets filthy. I try to be chill about it unless it’s extremely close to nap- or bedtime.
C is a little athlete and she really doesn’t stop moving. Everyone who spends time with her comments on this. I can’t imagine what she’d do if she wasn’t moving all the time because it’s really all I’ve ever known. She loves experimenting with new ways to walk, doing sprints down our front hall, rolling around on the couch and ottoman, and trying to climb everything.
She loves to point at things so we’ll tell her what they are, and she knows when we get it wrong. She’ll continue pointing and shake her head at us till we provide the correct answer. She’s also great at finding the correct object/animal/color/body part when asked.
C loves dogs and other animals, dolls, books, pictures, mirrors, music, sunglasses, running water, and anything she can climb.
She loves rhyming songs/poems (and she’ll let you know if you’re doing the wrong one), being carried while you run, 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, and she also claps whenever she thinks she did a good job. She loves books, and especially likes pointing at everything in a book so you’ll tell her what it is. Sometimes, she also goes off and sits by herself and looks through her books, which is adorable. She really does not like sitting still for diaper changes and she often shakes her head disapprovingly when asked if her food is yummy.
I think C has all her teeth except her two-year molars. I was wrong when I predicted her bottom incisors last month, but I see them starting to come through now.
Sleep
This month threw me for a loop with sleep. Jack was gone for most of May and, as hard as I knew that would be, I wasn’t worried about sleep. Two days later, I was proven a fool. I think C hit her 18-month regression a little on the early side. At first, she was waking up before 7am despite going to bed after 9pm. That (thankfully) ended pretty quickly.
But then naps became hard and she started skipping them a couple times a week – and still went to bed around 9 and woke up around 8. And then bedtime became hard. She was clearly tired, but fought sleep, woke up the second I started to leave the room, and cried or screamed a lot. We also had a few rough middle-of-the-nights. I was pretty much at a loss and just hoped the phase would end quickly.
I’d say we’re mostly on the other side of it now, but her sleep still isn’t what I’d consider normal. Naps are a tad tricky, and she’s taking longer to fall asleep at both nap- and bedtime. And she’s waking up super late and not taking naps sometimes.
Right now, getting her C to sleep usually takes about 50 minutes, including getting her dressed and brushing her teeth.
I generally give her a bottle of whole milk to wind down. After she’s done drinking, she’ll often fuss a bit. So, I lay her on my shoulder, rub her back, and start reciting one of her favorite books from memory. She was okay with me singing her to sleep until about a week ago. Now, she seems to prefer I talk her to sleep. I recite a book or three and then chat with her about our day and how much I love her and like watching her grow up.
She generally falls asleep like this and then I wait a bit before transferring her to her crib. Sometimes, she can’t seem to get comfy on me, so I lay her in her crib and rub her back while I talk her to sleep. And occasionally, she wants me to leave while she’s squirming around in her crib and she puts herself to sleep.
C’s bedtime is usually around 9pm. She often sleeps till 8:30 or 9. And sometimes she’s up before 8. Like I mentioned, though, the last few days, she’s been sleeping till 11 or later.
When she takes one, her nap is a little shorter right now – closer to one hour than two – and often she doesn’t go to sleep till 3pm. I wake her a little before 5pm on the rare occasions she’s still sleeping then, and that typically doesn’t mess with her 9pm bedtime too much.
Since we’ve had a few of them lately, I’ll address the 11am+ wake-ups. She goes to bed around 9, wakes up after 11, and then we plow through the day without a nap. It has gone surprisingly well, but I suspect it’s just a phase. I tend to follow her lead as much as I can, so when we don’t have early plans, I let it happen. I have been trying to relax as much as I can in the morning to charge up for the day, and then I just include her in my chores even more than usual.
In other new things, I made her a bottle a few nights ago and set it on the entertainment center to take upstairs at bedtime. But she walked over, grabbed it, took it to Jack, and insisted on drinking it right then.
I figured it was as good a time as any to try to get her to sleep without it, so we let her do her thing. And then I took her upstairs and brushed her teeth, and then rocked and talked her to sleep. She pointed to the table where I usually set the milk in her room and let out a few tired whine-cries at first, but she settled within about two minutes and fell asleep faster than she has in a week.
Night two didn’t go as smoothly, but it was more my fault than anything. For ten minutes, she cried and yelled and thrashed around in my arms. I held her tightly, talked, recited stories, sang, and asked her to please stop thrashing because I was afraid she was going to hurt herself. And then I asked if she wanted me to lay her in her crib. She said please, I did as she wanted and then rubbed her back and recited Time for Bed, and she was out.
We’ll probably try to make the downstairs bottle the new norm at night. She’ll move to her big-girl room soon, and I would rather run one experiment at a time.
Eating
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 and fruits, and eats eggs, cheese, guacamole, and noodles of all sorts very consistently.
She’s a little more into meat these days, and she’ll always eat it if it’s dipped in guac. Or if we include a bite of feta with it.
We eat dinner as a family – though this past month the family didn’t include Jack as much as it did my parents since he was at Army training – 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. If she’s hungry, she does well with fruit and veggies (and occasionally 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 still favors water, though. There are worse things.
Schedule
We fit most of our plans into the pre-nap time, since C naps so late these days. I usually let her get up whenever she naturally does, have breakfast, and clean up. Then we run errands, go outside, or go on play dates. We stopped swim lessons for now, since we can go to the pool anytime. I pretty much avoid afternoon play dates because she starts her nap right as other kids her age get up.
We eat lunch between noon and 1, and then she plays or helps while I clean up. Her nap generally starts between 2:45 and 3:15 and ends between 4:30 and 5. After her nap, she’s often ready to go out and play as soon as she’s had a snack. We eat dinner around 7, squeeze in a little more outside time, and let her get all her energy out by running all over the couch, tumbling around on her Nugget, or climbing up and down the stairs. I get her up to bed once she crashes or starts asking for milk.
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. I love talking her to sleep. It’s so sweet that she wants to rest on me a little more these days.
- She gets frustrated with having a ponytail partway through the day and insists on going through the rest of the day with her hair in her face. Yes, I could cut it. No, I’m not going to.
- When she wants anything, she signs “please” really, really hard and looks up at you with big brown eyes.
- She loves to get the baby sign language book off the shelf and show you she knows every sign. (Except she sometimes uses “again” for “book,” which is entirely fair. I most often use “again” in the context of her wanting me to reread a book.)
- When we get out of the car at home, she almost always points at the sidewalk chalk or toy car in our garage to let me know she wants to stay outside.
- Starting around Memorial Day, she became obsessed with American flags. Now, she points them out everywhere and wants to go visit the little flags neighbors have in their flower beds.
- She still 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 and takes all of five minutes to clean up later. Sometimes, she pretends to put various products on herself. And sometimes there’s still a little makeup on a brush and she ends up with blush on her nose.
- 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 shorts, the extra length on my watch, my hair, the diamond on my engagement ring, and the strap on my bra while she’s winding down. She’ll absentmindedly play with the fringe on a blanket or a tag on her toy while she’s playing.
- She says “mmmm” when she wants a kiss. And she’ll randomly climb onto your lap and “mmmm” in your face. It’s like she just realized she loves you so much that she has to give you a kiss right now.
- She likes to duck between your legs when you’re standing, and she’ll go back and forth for a while before she gets tired of the game.
- When I pick her up, sometimes she’ll lay her head on my shoulder and just go totally limp for a few minutes.
- Her squeals and babbles. She has a lot to say.
- 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.
- When she doesn’t want to be picked up, she makes her armpits go limp so she just slides through your grip.
- She has the best, most genuine giggle ever, and she’s experimenting with different laughs right now, which is so cute.
- Whether you’re laying on the floor or sitting on the couch, she treats you like a jungle gym and climbs and rolls all over you.
- When we think she’s tired or it’s time for nap/bed, we’ll ask if she wants milk. Sometimes, she insists she’s not ready and shakes her head aggressively. Other times, she desperately signs “please.”
- We know she’s tired well before she does, so we find ourselves asking this on repeat some nights and she says no over and over. But then something slightly inconveniences her or she takes a big tumble and suddenly she’s at the bottom of the stairs trying to open the gate to go up to bed.
