This past week our Genevieve turned 20 months old!
Many apologies for skipping the past couple of months of Genevieve updates. I’ve been majorly behind on photo editing, and I haven’t had a lot of milestones to report.
This past month, Genevieve had her 18-month-old check-up at the doctor. She weighed 25 lbs (73rd percentile), measured 30.5 inches tall (5th percentile), and had a head circumference of 18.5″ (64th percentile). Genevieve remains short for her age but has otherwise completely caught up physically with her non-preemie peers. This past appointment was the first time that Genevieve hit all but one area – gross motor skills – of the development milestone survey for her age group. Usually, I end up filling out the survey for three months younger to get better benchmarks.
Genevieve continues to amaze all of us with her verbal skills. She has well over a dozen words that she uses regularly, including apple, cheese, ball, car, truck, yes, no, go, uh-oh, peak-a-boo, please, kitty, dog, Blippi, and mine. Genevieve also makes very good car sounds and dinosaur roars.
Genevieve loves playing with her siblings and wants to be involved in everything that they’re doing. The three kids play together all the time. From dance parties to sword fighting to make-believe house, she’s always willing to participate in their games. Olivia and Genevieve play on their own quite a bit as well. Genevieve is crazy about Daddy. Both she and Olivia have a tough time giving Jake adequate breathing room while he’s at home, which is sweet but very overwhelming.
Genevieve is still not walking independently. As with all of her major development milestones thus far, her walking progress has been slow but steady. It’s taken her months to learn how to steer and maneuver the sit-to-stand walker, push car, baby doll stroller, etc. beyond basic forward movements. But she is a pro with them now. Genevieve loves cruising on furniture, kitchen cabinets, etc. Over the last couple of months, she’s become more willing to walk with hand assistance.
At the 20-month mark, Genevieve is walking as much as eight to 12 steps at a time independently. It’s still sporadic. She either lacks the confidence or the motivation to do a whole lot of walking practice at once. It’s not that she doesn’t have the physical skills; she’s just unsure of herself or would rather revert to crawling. It doesn’t help that Genevieve has two older siblings constantly “helping” as well as two parents who are very motivated to have her walking. So many times, she would rather just be left alone to practice walking by herself with no one watching her.
You may or may not have noticed from all of the pictures in Genevieve’s updates that she’s had a lazy left eye since birth. It’s a very common condition in preemie babies. Unfortunately, it’s not something that goes away on its own. Also, unfortunately, the wait times to see most children’s medical specialists are extremely long. We will be getting her in to see someone this fall. For the last couple of months, we’ve been having Genevieve wear an adhesive eye patch (it’s like a Band-Aid) for a couple of hours a day. Her willingness to wear it from day to day varies a lot, but it is helping. Genevieve’s eyes don’t move in sync, but her left eye does move quite a bit more.
Genevieve had been holding steady with eight teeth for months. She’d cut her last tooth sometime in April. This past month, she finally cut one more, this time a molar on the bottom. I’m pretty sure that she’s still missing a few incisors.
At the beginning of the summer, I transitioned Genevieve into all 12-month pants and a mix of 12-month and 18-month shorts, onesies, pajamas, and dresses. Aside from pants, Genevieve and Olivia are very close in size right now and can wear a lot of the same clothes. It’s been nice this summer that they can share shorts, as we go through the stash so quickly. Otherwise, I keep most of their clothes separate and am planning to transition them up to 2T and 3T as we hit their birthdays this fall/winter. Currently, Genevieve is wearing size 4 shoes. She has never loved wearing shoes and still kicks them off in the car the vast majority of the time.
Genevieve remains a great eater. Of the three kids, she’s been by far the most adventurous eater. Until very recently, Genevieve was also eating by far the most at mealtime. Tommy and Olivia both still prefer to snack but keep doing better at meals. Unless Genevieve is teething or extremely tired, it’s very rare that she doesn’t eat a good meal. Currently, Genevieve loves blueberries, blackberries, breakfast sausage, cheese, hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and meatballs. She’s always willing to try fruits and vegetables as well as most grains and proteins that we eat at dinner, such as pasta and salmon.
Genevieve also remains a great sleeper. The girls are on a very consistent sleeping schedule. They sleep from 8:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. and then take at least a two-hour nap in the afternoon, usually from about 12:30-2:30 p.m. If we’ve had an especially active day, it’s not uncommon that they sleep longer than two hours. Genevieve is still sleeping in a swaddle for every nap and at night.
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.
