This past week our Genevieve turned 16 months old!
Genevieve continues to amaze us with her vocabulary and verbal skills. She listens to everything that Tommy and Olivia say. Genevieve repeats so many sounds and picks up a new word every week or so. Genevieve’s newest favorite word is ta-da. The kids say ta-da in Olivia’s gymnastics class. Both girls say it all the time at home while putting their hands in the air. I will never get tired of it.
This past month Genevieve started waving goodbye, which we love so much. She waves goodbye every time she takes a nap and goes to bed and whenever we’re leaving somewhere or saying goodbye to family or friends leaving our house. We often prompt Genevieve because it’s so cute. But she’ll wave all on her own when she just hears the word goodbye.
Just like Olivia, Genevieve was extremely motivated to learn to climb the stairs before she walked. She climbs stairs at every opportunity, which obviously creates challenges. Genevieve continues to use the walker regularly and loves it. She still hasn’t figured out steering or backing up at all. Genevieve has started letting go of furniture for a few seconds at a time. She gets more and more confident but isn’t taking steps yet.
Also much like Olivia, Genevieve loves climbing in general. We have multiple kids’ chairs, and she climbs in and out of them all the time. Genevieve loves any chair that rocks and can rock herself independently.
Genevieve cut one more tooth this past month, another top tooth, bringing her total up to seven teeth. Thankfully, she cut this one uneventfully without a lot of drooling or only a couple of days with any rough sleeping and eating. Genevieve’s bottom four teeth have all come in completely. She’s still working on the top three that are there.
Genevieve’s hair has gotten so curly over the past couple of months. She’s always had more hair than either Tommy or Olivia did as a baby or toddler, and it’s so dark. While it’s been apparent for quite a while that Genevieve’s hair would be curly, you can see those curls in pictures so much more now.
All of our big events this past month were gatherings with family or friends. The kids and I were just lucky to get to more scheduled classes/activities than the previous two months due to so much sickness and bad weather. We only did one outing with friends to a museum in Milwaukee (which was so much fun, but I took zero pictures of Genevieve). We had visits with Tommy’s birth family and my in-laws and the kids’ cousins at their houses. Then we hosted two other couples and their kids, all of which was so nice.
Genevieve remains my most enthusiastic eater of all three kids, especially for meals. I still have her drink a cup of milk around lunchtime before her nap and then eat a bigger snack when she wakes up mid-afternoon. This past month Genevieve has been most excited about eating blueberries. I don’t know how many blueberries she would eat in a sitting. We’ve been going through a couple of pints in four or five days. Genevieve and Olivia eat the vast majority of them. Genevieve also still really loves breakfast sausage and Mandarin oranges.
This past month Genevieve had good sleep all around. Her naps were great, and she went down more easily than ever. Sometimes Jake or I still have to go back into Genevieve’s room a few times to get her settled at night. Every two or three nights she wakes up between 5:00 and 6:00 a.m. wanting milk. I give her a cup right in her crib, and she goes down again for a couple more hours.
You can find all of my baby/toddler updates for all three kids as well as general family updates and other family-related posts in the family section of the blog.