18 Months Old

Dear Hailey,

Hello my sweet little peanut!  We have clocked another month in your precious young life, and your daddy and I are still as smitten with you as the day you were born.  I say this every month but you are so sweet, so smart, and SO silly!  You make us laugh every day with the funny things you say/jabber and the funny motions you make.  You love to dance to music and act out your own special versions of the Itsy Bitsy Spider, Wheels on the Bus, and If You're Happy and You Know it.  You have grown leaps and bounds in the 6 months since your birthday, and I can only imagine what the next 6 months will bring.  But one thing is certain, your daddy and I are positively in love with you!

Here is a rundown of where we are at 1 and half years old:

• 24 pounds, 12 ounces (57%) 
• 2 feet, 8 inches tall (32 inches) (61%)
• You wear 24m clothing and jammies with a few 18's and 2T's thrown in for good measure.
• Your shoe size is 5, and your left foot is a half size bigger than your right - just like mama!
• You are still cloth diapered most of the time but when we wear sposies you are in size 4.
• Your favorite food by far is yogurt.  No matter the meal time, as soon as you get in your high chair you say "Yo!?".  You eat plain organic whole milk yogurt and I add some agave nectar to sweeten it up a bit.  You also love fruit.  Your curent favorite fruits are blueberries, bananas, and apples. You also like bread, graham crackers, cheese, pasta, and applesauce. 
• A list of your least favorite foods would take up this entire post, so I'll just say you are a very picky eater!  You refuse to eat any meat whatsoever.  Basically you won't eat anything that doesn't look familiar.  I hope you outgrow this!
• You still love your milk, or "wawa" in your words!  You drink 3-4 sippy cups of organic whole milk every day. 
• You love any container that you can climb into, especially laundry baskets. 

• You have around 65 single words.  Your frequently used words are: more, no more, bye, hi, dog, mama, Buh (Bucky), wawa, up, out, shoe, book, wawa, baby/babies, please, and I love you/thank you ("ah you"!).  A couple new cute ones you learned lately are Ho Ho (for Santa) and "night night" - melts my heart!!  You are not yet putting two words together, but you can communicate pretty darn clearly by using single words!
• You do the signs for "all done", "more", and "eat".
• You take 1 nap per day, about 1-1.5 hours long, and sleep for 11 hours at night (down at 7:00, up at 6:00).  You go down without a fight and sometimes even wave at me and say "bye!" when I walk out of the room. 
• You love to play with your baby dolls, patting their backs, "shushing" them and feeding them their bottles. 
• You have 12 teeth (6 on bottom, 6 on top, including 4 molars).  You LOVE having your teeth brushed!
• Your favorite shows are Clifford and Barney.  I love it when you dance around to the music and point to things on the screen that you recognize and then name them.  We watch Sesame Street sometimes, too, but other than when Elmo is on the screen, you really don't care for it too much.
• You LOVE music!  I play kid music around the house and in the car, and you are always saying "more! more!" before the song is even over!  Your favorite by far is the Itsy Bitsy Spider.  I've probably sang it a thousand times this past month :) 
• You haven't used a paci since you were 9 months old, and you aren't really attached to any blankets or lovies either.  You do like to snuggle with Baby and Hoo Hoo when you go to sleep, but you can sleep just fine without them too.

talk about precious!

• You have started to do some cute girly things lately, too.  You love to put on ALL of mommy's headbands, brush your hair, pretend to put on makeup, wear pretty jewelry (mardi gras beads...), and play in Grandma Peggy's makeup case - especially with her nail file and lotion.  You rub your hands together, smell them and say "ohh nigh (nice)!".  Oh, and you like to wear purses (around your neck!).

• You sweet blonde hair is growing longer and poker straight!  Not a curl in sight.  Mommy loves to put your hair in ponytails and pigtails :) 
• Your eyes are still bright blue and beautiful.

• The Christmas season is here and I have taught you who "Ho Ho" is.  However, you were not too keen on him when we took you to see him at the mall!  You just sat on his lap and reached your hands out to me with these two tiny tears going straight down your face saying "Mama!?  Mama!?"  You've never squeezed me so tight as when I took you off his lap!  Afterwards you kept saying "No more.  No more.  No more."

• With the exception of 4 days around Thanksgiving, your daddy has been gone since November 1st working hard up in New Jersey and New York.  We missed him so much and were so happy when he came home this afternoon!!  Now the Christmas season can officially begin :)

Hailey Rian, you continue to make your daddy and I so happy and proud.  Happy Half Birthday, Sweet Girl! 

Great Grandma feeding me some nummy applesauce

fun afternoon at carondelet park with mommy

naptime with dolly

hooray for me eating off a real plate!  and yes I gave her way too much food.  She probably ate about a fourth of each section.  Sigh. 

ooh, i'm so stuffed after that big thanksgiving dinner!  (NOT, I only ate applesauce and a biscuit.)

stacking blocks with uncle day-bed

morning snuggles

pinkies up!

feeding cheerios to dolly and hoo hoo



taunting bucks with a stick

dinner party!

no shoes and no coat playing outside in december?  sure!

Feeding Papa a cookie

smooches from great grandma

pure sweetness

happy 59th birthday papa!!

st. nick's day 2012

back off, blondie, this is MY toy

baking cookies with my favorite 4 year old

attempted cousin pic while waiting for santa...

 

And last but not least, an update on one of the Christmas projects I'm working on.  A huge thank you to my dad for working on this while Rian was away.  And Rian and I still have lots to do before Christmas to get it complete!  Paint, countertops, oven chains, stove top, back board, hang picture/curtains/shelves, etc..........  And here is where we stand today:

17 Months Old & Christmas Project

Hailey’s 17^th month was a doozy… to say the least.  It’s been the toughest month for me as parent thus far.  But as hard as it’s been (major sleeping and eating issues…), it has been equally rewarding.  H is talking more than ever (she has 46 words!  Not that I’m counting…) and her personality and independence are at an all-time high.  Rian and I love her positively to pieces and we wouldn’t trade even the hardest days for anything at all.

On to the details!  I know that my poor husband, sister, mom, and Lindsay have heard enough of the details already – sorry guys!  But thanks for your support :)  So… sleeping issues first.  About 3 weeks ago, Hailey started seriously resisting her morning nap (typically at 9am).  She was taking for-ev-er to go down, and once she finally fell asleep, she would only sleep for 20-30 mins (used to be an hour).  And the same thing would happen with her afternoon nap.  The lack of good rest made her cranky, whiny, and clingy all the time and just not her usual self.  And poor sleeping=poor eating=angry baby=angry mama.  Boo.  So something had to change!  I thought that perhaps it was time for her to switch to one nap instead of two.  I did a bunch of research on it and found that she fit all the criteria.  In case you’re not familiar, when tots are on “one nap” it’s usually for about 2 hours from approx. 12pm-2pm.  The first day I tried it, she managed to stay awake until 10:50am (after waking up around 5:45am).  She was so tired by that point that she went down with no problem at all.  Success!  Or so I thought.  She only slept for one hour.  And since she woke up at 12:30, she was not really tired again until 5ish.  But that is too late for a nap and also too early for bedtime!  Hence the problem.  I’ve been having to find ways to get her to take a catnap in the afternoon around 3pm so she can make it until her 7pm bedtime.  But making a not-tired child go to sleep is not an easy task.  The only thing that has really worked is putting her in the car and driving around until she falls asleep!  I’m aware that’s not a good habit to practice, but I really don’t know what else to do.  Can someone please tell me how to get Hailey to nap for 2 hours straight?  (I've tried "cry it out" and she just cries the entire second hour....) Please, and thank you J 

And then there’s the eating.  This girl has become such a picky eater!  She refuses to touch anything she doesn’t recognize, so trying new foods is totally fruitless.  At first I thought she was going on a food strike because maybe she was bored with all her “regular” foods and she was craving something new in her diet.  So Lindsay and I went on a spree of looking up new things to feed our babes and going back and forth with what worked and what didn’t.  Well, the record pretty much states that Kenzie ate most everything, and Hailey ate nothing  :-/  I even regressed to homemade purees for a while so I could get some vegetables in her without her really knowing it.   But that is so much work (and expensive…) and it pains me to watch them literally go down the drain because she won’t eat them.  It makes me feel better that she always eats a really good and healthy breakfast and usually eats a good lunch, so if she only has a few bites at dinner, I try not to sweat it.  She drinks a lot of milk and certainly isn’t losing weight, so I think we’re doing ok. 

On to the fun stuff!  Boy do I just love her.  She is my bestie.  She makes me laugh all day long!  And she is talking SO MUCH!  Did you see earlier how she has 46 words?  I’m just a little proud J  Honestly, I don’t even know how many words she is “supposed” to have by this age, but I think 46 is really good.  Some of her new words since last month are:

-Down ("dow")

-Please ("pwease")

-Up

-Baby ("baba")

-Fish ("sish")

-I love you ("Ay you")

-Maw Maw (for Grandma Peggy)

-Buh (Bucky and bucket)

-Apple ("app-oh")

-Hat

-Thank you ("deh chu")

-Choo Choo (for train.... or any vehicle really)

-Spoon ("boo")

-Sunshine ("Sah shah") - this is SO cute

-Owl ("ow-oh" or she just says "hoo hoo!")

-Turtle ("tuh-duh" or "ter-der")

-More

-Moo (for cow)

-Neigh (for horse)

-Baa (for sheep)

-Cook ("coo") - she says this whenever she sees me going for the pots & pans! "Coo!?"
 

And here is the sweetest video you've ever seen.  I'm so proud of my smart girl.  Flashcards made by Mommy+MicrosoftWord+Clipart

All the time I overhear her talking to herself saying, “More?!  Yeah!  Wawa!?  Yeah!  Pwease??”  Her most used word is definitely “more” but in HaileyLand, “more” has many meanings ranging from ‘more food/drink’ to ‘I want to play with that’ to ‘help me/pick me up.'
 

Here is another video just brimming with adorable-ness.   She is taunting poor Bucks with a treat!  Pay no attention to my squeal at the end when she 'pretends' to eat his treat....

 

And another cute vid.  Little Missey taught herself how to climb up onto the couch.  Isn't that just super?  I really think she's going to be a gymnast.  Girlfriend is STRONG!

 

More noteworthy events & pics from Hailey's 17th Month:

First Trip to the Magic House:

 

Piggies :)

 

Multiple Pumpkin Patches:

 

Buckets, Buckets Buckets!

 

The day daddy went in to work late so he could spend a day with us at the Zoo:

 

Fun with Leaves:

 Boo at the Zoo:

 

Lots of visits to Jeff City:

Pumpkin Painting with Kenzie and then again with me and Daddy:

Hailey's 2nd Halloween:

 

Playing with Toys:

 

First presidential election:

 

And I don't have any pictures or video of this yet because she just started it a few days ago, but Hailey loves the Itsy Bitsy Spider!  We were watching Barney a couple days ago and when the song came on she just lit up!  When it was over she said "more!? more!?"  I'm pretty sure we watched it about ten times in a row.  And now when she hears it she tries to do the motions!  It is so cute.  She loves all music lately, really.  She claps and does little motions and says "more! more!" when the songs end. 

Well, Thanksgiving is next week and I really can't believe it.  I also can't believe she is almost a year and a half old!  Christmas is dangerously close, too, and I am knee-deep in projects!  The biggest one being the conversion of an old entertainment center into a play kitchen.  Would you like to hear a short story about that little endeavor?  Ok good.  So, anyone who follows me on Pinterest has probably seen me pin a million DIY play kitchens lately.  I don't even remember where I got the idea to do it, I just remember thinking a few months ago that I wanted to get Hailey a play kitchen for Christmas, but thought that those Little Tikes kitchens were too small and too expensive.  A girl needs counterspace!  Get excited people because here is the end goal:

Cutest thing you've ever seen, right?

And get ready to laugh because here is where we are today, less than 5 weeks till Christmas:

And for some strange reason, I'm confident I can pull it off.  I've got paint swatches.  I've got fabric to make curtains.  I've got wooden discs and spray paint for burners.  I've got a dog bowl for the sink.  I even have a really cute potholder.  And don't forget the adorable wooden cookies and plush cupcakes that I found in the dollar section at Target.  Almost there, right? 

Stay Tuned!