This past week our Olivia turned 17 months old!
Somehow I forgot to include Olivia’s most recent stats in her last update. These stats are technically from her 15-month appointment, but she’d actually just turned 16 months old. At that appointment, Olivia weighed 22 pounds three ounces (58th percentile), measured 32 inches in height (83rd percentile), and had a head circumference of 18.5 inches (79th percentile).
Olivia’s new word this month is happy. We say “happy baby” all the time about both her and Genevieve. Olivia is also obsessed with both her book of baby faces and the YouTube show Sparkabilities, both of which go through emotions with corresponding faces. So we talk about “happy” in both of those contexts as well. Olivia has been saying “hi” for so long that she has the “h” sound down really well. As such, she says “happy” so clearly.
Olivia loves all animals and remains obsessed with our cats. She says “kitty” and “baby” just as much as ever. Most recently, Olivia has also started getting excited about seeing dogs. There are a lot of people in our neighborhood with dogs and we see them often, especially now that we’re taking walks more regularly again. Olivia points every single time she sees a dog and has just started saying “doggie.”
Olivia has gotten very good at saying “please” and almost always claps her hands when she says it. We get a fair amount of “thank you’s” as well. I say things to Olivia all the time just to help her start learning the words without expecting her to repeat them. She repeats more and more words each week. Most recently she repeated “pepper” when I handed her a slice of sweet red pepper at dinner.
Olivia is my little helper. She’s always making sure that doors and drawers are shut and putting away dirty clothes, picking up food that’s spilled, etc. I hope that it continues!
In her 16-month update, I talked about how Olivia wasn’t running yet and that she still reverted to knee walking a couple of times a day. At some point this past month, Olivia quit knee walking altogether. She does still like to take someone’s hand to walk, especially when we’re not at home. Olivia can also run now and does so regularly. As she gains more mobility, it’s fun to see how much more she and Tommy are able to do together. She absolutely loves playing all sorts of games with Tommy. Olivia is also so good about taking Tommy’s hand and walking with him instead of me, such as going into music class while I carry Genevieve.
Olivia’s new favorite activity at the park is going down the slide with someone. She asks to go down the slide with me or Jake and will do so over and over again. More recently, we convinced her to go down the slide with Tommy. It still takes some convincing, but she loves it.
Olivia cut three new teeth this past month. She got two in the front, one on the top and one on the bottom. Shockingly, Olivia also cut one of her bottom back teeth. Her teeth total is up to seven now.
As I mentioned in Genevieve’s last update, between Tommy’s crazy soccer schedule, me and the three kids all being sick, Jake working all but one weekend, and a lot of lousy weather, we didn’t do too many outings. But we did fit in one more trip to the Domes (pictured in the second photo in this post).
Olivia was a real trooper tagging along to a lot of soccer practices and games this past month, many of which were pretty cold. As Jake ended up working during every single game weekend and on the two weekdays that they had makeup games, I recruited family to help me at the games. My parents were able to come to a handful of practices as well. It definitely helped Olivia. Not surprisingly, after a solid month of watching soccer and running around with Tommy and his teammates and their siblings whenever possible, Olivia is able to dribble a soccer ball.
Olivia has done such a good job transitioning away from her bottle. As she still wakes up once at night wanting more milk, I give her a bottle then. Olivia has also been extremely motivated to drink water out of a bottle, as opposed to a cup. Otherwise, she drinks out of a sippy cup the rest of the time. Olivia has also largely transitioned away from pacifiers, except for naps and at night. I’ve started leaving her elephant Wubbanub in her crib. Then she gets so excited when she has it for going to sleep. There have been a few times that I’ve brought a pacifier, such as a doctor’s appointment. The rest of the time, she really hasn’t needed it during the day.
Olivia still loves her purees and eats a number of softer foods, such as yogurt and oatmeal, regularly. Generally, I save the purees for dinner and alternate giving her purees and regular food for dinner. This month Olivia really got into eating cheese. She also tried cottage cheese for the first time and loved it. Trying new foods has been really hit or miss. I do my best to offer her new foods at least a few times a week. More often than not, she throws a lot of regular food on the floor, either when it’s new or when she’s just over it. But she does keep trying new foods and has really liked a few of them.
This past month there were a handful of nights that Olivia slept straight through or woke up for her final bottle before we went to sleep. She remains a champion napper, going down right after lunch and sleeping for at least two hours almost every day.
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.
