This past week our Annie turned 16 months old!
I had to push back Annie’s 15-month doctor’s appointment because the older three kids were all under the weather. Hopefully, I’ll have updated stats for her in my next update.
The biggest update from this past month is that Annie started walking. At 15 months old, Annie was taking about 10 steps at a time. She still reverted to crawling often because it was faster. Now, at 16 months old, Annie is walking everywhere. She still falls down all the time and reverts to crawling every once in a while. But Annie can get around whenever she wants and is getting more confident every day. Between cold weather and the older kids being sick, we haven’t done nearly as many outings during the past month as we have most other months this year. But it’s so nice now when we are out that Annie can walk around a bit and isn’t crawling everywhere, getting dirty, and putting things in her mouth (not as many things, anyway).
Annie loves listening to and dancing to music. A year later, Olivia and Genevieve are still going strong with the Toniebox, and now Annie loves it, too. I’m blown away that she understands exactly how it works, including how to adjust the volume and change the songs. I can put the Toniebox in the pack ‘n play or play area with Annie. On one occasion recently, she insisted on taking it with us to my chiropractor appointment. Annie will also wiggle on her own like she’s listening to music and dancing to it. I love to think that Annie has a song going in her head.
Annie continues to love toy food and dishes, especially cups and spoons; magnetic blocks; books, especially books that play music or sounds; and anything that involves putting toys into and then taking them back out of different containers. I’ve saved a few big peanut butter-filled pretzel containers. Annie will entertain herself for minutes on end, putting blocks into and taking them back out of the containers. I recently brought our bead maze toy out of the basement, and Annie loves it. Annie has always enjoyed Olivia and Genevieve’s Little People dollhouse and people. She’s slowly starting to do more imaginative play with the people and with other dolls and stuffed animals.
Annie’s favorite phrase right now remains “thank you.” She loves to hand us toys, food, sippy cups, etc., and then say “thank you.” In typical toddler fashion, Annie is also a big fan of the word “no” these days. She has repeated lots of new words over the past month, but she doesn’t use any of them consistently.
Annie is still cutting the same two top teeth on either side of the middle teeth. She’s been working on these two teeth for over a month. I’m pretty sure that Annie’s starting to cut at least one or two more bottom teeth as well. Annie’s had a couple of weeks with a bad runny nose. Thankfully, it hasn’t been terrible the entire month. All of the kids have been fighting coughs. I’m not sure how much of Annie’s cough has been from teething/sinus drip and how much has been from her catching it from the other kids. But she hasn’t been able to shake her cough fully all month.
I’m still transitioning Annie off of bottles. I tried going cold turkey in the middle of the month, and it didn’t go well at all. So, I’ve slowly been building in more milk in sippy cups, especially during the day, which is going better. I got a couple of 10-ounce sippy cups, which Annie seems to prefer for milk, maybe because they are a more similar size to the bottles she’s been using exclusively for the past 10 months or so. Annie still isn’t ready to give up bottles first thing in the morning and when she goes to bed.
Annie’s done really well with going down between 7:00 and 8:00 p.m. and waking up between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m. She still wakes up wanting milk in the middle of the night or early, sometime around 5:00 a.m., at least once a week. Annie’s still going strong with taking one long nap per day. When she has to come along to pick up Tommy from school, I put her down by 11:30 a.m., so she’ll get a full three hours. When she doesn’t have to come along or it’s a day that Tommy doesn’t have school, we try to push a little bit later.
You can find all of my baby/toddler updates for all of the kids as well as general family updates and other family-related posts in the family section of the blog.
