Good Times and Sunshine: Elsie Marie

It is hard to believe that in one month, Elsie is going to be 18 months old! These past few months have just flown by!!! This past month has been so much fun and I just love watching her personality shine through. She has been so sweet despite the rough nights and has been so happy. It must be the change in weather. It was also fun to get back outside to take her monthly pictures. She just loves being outside so there were lots of smiles, excitement, and different expressions.

GROWTH: This month Elsie is weighing right around 23 pounds and is 32 inches tall. She is growing out of 12-18 months clothes but 24M clothes are a little big, especially the pants. She wears 5 and 5.5 size shoes. Size 6 is still a little too big which is a bummer because she received so many cute Size 6 sandals as a gift.

EATING: Elsie is still a great eater! The main thing she won't eat is beans...not in chili, not plain, not baked, no beans. Otherwise she will eat just about anything we give to her. She is getting really good with the spoon/fork and can feed herself a whole container of yogurt and get only about 25% of it on her bib ;). We did have to take away soft spouted sippy cups because she would tip them upside down, push down and milk would pour out. Her favorite way to drink is out of Mommy's water glass which has a lid and straw. Every time she see it she says "wa-wa" and points to it. In the mornings when she comes and snuggles in bed with us she will look for it on the top of our headboard where I keep it at night.

SLEEP: Well she started out the month with her typical sleeping habits-bed by 7:00 wake up between 5:00-6:00. Unfortunately things changed by the end of the this month. She would wake up in the middle of the night and cry and cry despite all of our efforts of comfort for like two hours! She did this probably 60% of the time over the course of 12 days! It was exhausting. Both John and I agreed with was worse than when she was a newborn. We were starting to believe that she had an ear infection until we started to see the beginnings of her two upper eye teeth (canines, bicuspids, whatever you want to call them). This has been the worst teething experience to date for her. Poor girl. On top of the teething she was dealing with a cough/stuffy nose. I hope it ends soon! Our routine is pretty much the same except we have started to do bath almost every night because this crazy girl gets so dirty playing outside. So it goes like this: bath, brush teeth (we do it first, then she gets her chance), diaper/jammies, pick out friends, snuggle in chair, read a few books, songs, then bedtime. She still goes to bed without a fuss just about every night. We are struglling a little bit on what to put her in to sleep at night because we don't want her to get so hot or too cold. In the winter it was pretty standard and we kept the temp of her room pretty consistent but with the hot days and cool nights we have to change it up. We learned our lesson though after the first hot night that our typical night time wardrobe of onesie, zip up sleeper, and sleepsack was just too hot when she woke up super sweaty and unhappy. The minute we changed her jammies she had a sigh of relief and practically fell right back to sleep in our arms. So now we mix it up between shorts vs pants and long sleeves vs. short sleeves with a lightweight cotton sleepsack.

TEETH:
Like I mentioned above, she will soon be up to 14 teeth once those babies pop through!

DEVELOPMENT:
The biggest change I have seen this month is how much focus she has when she is trying to do something. Her biggest thing right now is trying to put on/take off clothes and shoes and she has been trying to buckle the buckles on her high chair and booster seats. Oh also on her stroller. She is so determined and she will keep working at it until she gets it done. She has also been that way with buttons and gets so mad when she can't do it herself. She is definitely developing a sense of independence. She is really getting into dancing and will imitate a lot of our fancy dance moves ;). She is beginning to sing along to songs with us like our "Time to Go to JoJo's" song, ABC's., Row Row Row your boat, and will do the actions to "Wheels on the Bus". When we read books she can point to so many objects when we ask her to and she is so particular on the books she wants to read. It is the object recognition that has really started to amaze me.

I told her to go sit in her chair and say "cheese"

PLAY: She absolutely loves being outside. She has discovered the sandbox at Jo Jo's and love scooping up the sand into the bucket. At homes she loves to play with the rocks around our house, play in her Cozy Coupe, and just run around. Inside she enjoys her Megablocks, pushing stuff around in her doll stroller, playing with the fruit cups from the pantry (unopened of course). She has also really gotten in to playing with her baby dolls. She likes to put it to sleep in the cradle, try to change a diaper and wipe its bottom with one of her wipes and she likes to give it a bottle. She absolutely adores Barney. The whole TV thing started when she would wake up at 5:30 and we weren't ready to crawl out of bed yet but wanted to keep her entertained. Nothing that was on at 5:30 am were doing the trick so one day I decided to record Barney. That afternoon as I was trying to get stuff packed up to leave for MN I turned it on and she sat in her chair and watched the whole thing. So every weekday and episode of Barney gets recorded to the DVR. Some days we will watch it and snuggle together in the chair after nap and some days we watch it at 5:30 AM snuggled in our bed. It definitely doesn't happen everyday but I love having a show I know she is interested in. A couple other things she enjoys doing is playing with her bath crayons (in the bath of course) and playing with play-doh. She has also been VERY generous with her kisses which I absolutely love. We are working on "I Love You" with the pointing to your eye, chest, and then the person. She has the first and last one down but still has to get the "Love" :).

SPEECH: Oh goodness I can't believe how her vocabulary has changed. She says so many words on her own but is also repeating just about everything we say. New words include, wa-wa (water), blankie, Barney, apple, "cow says moo", and monkey. I feel like there is more but I just can't remember right now.