Sweet Sixteen (months)

This month has been fairly quiet on the ‘new skills’ front for the stormbringer. Mostly we’re just working on our vocabulary and communication skills. We’ve passed the one year milestone months ago and all of the seasonal festivities (like Halloween parties) have already been experienced before. But we do have a few things to report.

Maeve at 16 months

Words. Maeve is getting so much better about vocalizing specific sounds for specific objects or activities.
Words she can sign:
all done, diaper (sort of), down, more,  it hurts, dog, book, bath, brush teeth.
Words she says:
all done/empty = “uh oh”, down= “dow”, baby = “bee bee”, bear= “bee”, nuk/pacifier = “nunu”, more = “more”, car = “brrm”, “peekaboo” and “boo”, belly button = “bo’”, bath = “bah”, book=  “buh'” & ball = “baw” (very subtle difference in sound, but context helps:). Sometimes she will say “mee’u” for milk.
She started ‘thinking’ when Lewis was deciding on what he could wear for Halloween (although it turned out he had to work and couldn’t stay at the party). She now puts her index finger to her cheek/chin/mouth and says “hmmm” 🙂 it’s adorable.
She definitely understands more words than she can say. She can find most of her toys that we’ll ask for, she can pick out specific books we ask for, she knows what we mean when we say toilet/ bathroom/ bed. She knows where her head is and her eyes and nose. She still gets confused about her ears. When I get her food ready, she’ll see the tray and hustle over to her chair 🙂 And after dinner she nearly always hops down from her chair and heads straight to the bathroom for bathtime 🙂

Exploring her body. The other week she found her belly button and loves to explore it. She has discovered the holes in her nose too and will stick her finger up it for no reason except that it’s there. She hasn’t started picking her nose and eating the rewards yet (whew) but she does have a cold so I’m trying to curtail this habit. For a couple of months now she has been enjoying exploring between her legs when she’s in the bath too. I’m not sure what to do about that. Mostly I let it slide, but I don’t want her fiddling with herself when I’m changing a dirty diaper.

If she sees me wiping up a spill she will mimic me. She will get a tissue (or her hand) and try to wipe up the spill. She occasionally grabs the brush and tries to sweep, but more often it goes toward the mouth (😦 blech).

Since Halloween she has had a cold. She had her 15month doctors visit just before Halloween and soon after that her sleep routine got all messed up. I’ve put it down to teething (tooth #7 finally came through and #8 will be here by thanksgiving). She had a week or so of waking in the night coughing and crying (some nights were better than others). The other night I ended up laying down with her on her bedroom floor until she seemed sleepy enough to move without waking her back up. On the 10^th (about 2 weeks into having the cold) she randomly threw up all over herself on the train home from the ‘burbs. She’d been fine all day and hadn’t eaten anything different or anything but I think it was a coughing fit that resulted in puking everywhere. We were still 25minutes away from home and she screamed for most of the train ride. Then we popped her in the bath to clean her off and she cheered right up. No fussing, no fever, no disturbing poop. I kept a close eye on her temperature over the next couple of days (especially as Lewis then came down with a bad cold/mild fever too), but if anything her temp was really low. Like 92-94F. Hypothermia sets in at 90F, but she was happy as a clam and I just turned up the heat, wrapped her up all warm and cozy and snuggled with her lots.

We’ve started a new term of swimming and are seeing some familiar faces and lots of new faces. She is definitely one of the oldest in the class and one of the tallest. Lifting her out of the pool for some of the activities is hard! My arms aren’t long enough 😛 and when she’s swimming on her front her arms stretched out and her legs kicking there’s a high chance of her kicking someone behind us 🙂 I’m glad she enjoys swimming though. She might hate the bits where we lay on our back, but if she’s on her front she is scooping her hands and kicking her feet and trying to propel herself, like a champ 🙂

Elena turned one on the 8^th and the following day had her birthday party which was lots of fun. They invited *way* more people than we invited to Maeve’s birthday, but they know far more families with small kids. There must have been about 10 kids ranging from 9mo- 8yrs running around!

I’ve made her a little Turkey tail belt to wear on Thanksgiving 🙂 It’s pretty adorable and I hope we get some good pics of her wearing it.

I’m really looking forward to Christmas this year! I have found a few stocking filler items for Maeve and am working on her tree gifts. I found a llama llama red pyjama stuffed toy at the thrift store the other day and just put it through the wash for her for Christmas. I think she’ll get a kick out of that as she loves those books.

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Practically Perfect In Every Way

Just a quick note about Maeve’s 15 month check up.
Stupidly I made the appointment for 8am which is breakfast time for the girl and she sleeps so well lately that waking her up early enough to leave in time was hard. I made sure everything was ready that the moment she woke up I just put a coat on over her pjs, popped her in the sling and headed out to catch the bus. She ate breakfast in the doctors office while we saw the nurse and waited for Dr M.

Maeve is now 21.3lbs and 31.25inches tall. Apparently she has the right to slow down her weight gain at this point but she’s still gaining a healthy amount. She’s still tall and skinny (but not too skinny).

Check up and vaccinations
She wasn’t too happy seeing the Dr today, she fussed at getting undressed and weighed and measured. She fussed at having her heart checked and her ears and eyes looked into. She *hated* getting the 4 shots (2 in each arm) and was very cross with the nurse. But now we have 4-5months until her next appointment and after that no more shots until 4 years!

Speech
Doctor said that the few words she speaks (Hi, Bye, Mama, Dada, Book, Ball) is a fine amount for her age and that even the “buh” sound for book/ball counts as a word. Yay. Simon is so vocal that I occasionally worry about Maeve’s slow speech development. But in the couple of days since her appointment she’s added ‘dow’ (down), ‘ooh’ (all done) and ‘more’ to her vocabulary!

After the doctor we walked home, skyped with my parents and went to the thrift store. In the evening she woke up cranky from her afternoon nap and cried most of the evening. She wouldn’t let Lewis near her and was just squirmy and uncomfortable and drooly and snotty. I think it’s part teething (still working on tooth #7) and part reaction to the shots. I gave her a bath and when she still seemed uncomfortable (like bloated gassy discomfort) I snuggled with her in her pjs until she started to doze off. It was half an hour after I put her down that I realized I should have given her some fever reducer, but she slept through the night fine. and we had a lazy day after than. Of course now she has a cold so we have all of that added to the mix to throw us off kilter 🙂

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Maeve and Me at 15 months

My little girl is 15 months today and she really is becoming a little girl (as opposed to a baby).

The Part That’s About Maeve:
I guess the biggest event that’s happened since September 18^th was that Grandma & Grandad visited from the UK. It felt like she developed a lot during their visit. I was very happy that she showed no signs of shyness or uncertainty with my parents when she saw them for the first time (okay, I know they met her when she was born, but she didn’t really meet them). I guess seeing them on Skype every week or so really helped form a bond between them. Within a day or 2 she had sussed out which grandparent to go to for which kind of entertainment etc 🙂Hint: Grandma for reading stories and Grandad for playing ball and making silly faces.

Communication
She says “hi” now (as of about the 27th Sept), and sometimes “hey doh” (hello). She’ll say “hi!” and wave at people and animals and pictures of people. Sometimes she says “bye” too, but that’s less frequent (and often to a closed door after the person has left :P). She says “buh” for ball or book, or brushing teeth but with signing she’s good at helping you understand the context. She doesn’t say “menumenumenu” or “takeabite” so much these days. She says  “bookie/bucky/b’key” a lot. She will point to a monkey/bunny/ dog and say it so I just say “yes, that *is* a monkey/bunny/dog.”.
She will sign ‘bath’ when I read certain lines in books about bath time (and mime brushing her teeth at those points). She signs ‘milk’, ‘more’, ‘book’. I am working on teaching her ‘cat’, ‘bunny’, ‘poop’ and a few other little words. We’ve started signing ‘no’ to tell her not to do certain things and she understands enough to stop and cry/sulk about not being allowed to do said thing (like climb on the coffee table).

Books & Toys & Playing
She can pick out certain books. If I say “That’s not my penguin”, “I love you stinky face” or tell her to get a Llama Llama book etc., she’ll go over to the pile and study the covers and get the right book (most of the time).
She play eats food/ drinks from her picnic basket. She enjoys taking things out of and putting them back in her picnic basket.
She started sitting in boxes recently. She emptied my box of ribbons and sat in it and she emptied her basket of blankets and climbed in. The other day she climbed into a box not much bigger than a shoebox ❤

She just started playing with her puzzles. Normally when I pull them out to play with she looks at them, pulls out the pieces and that’s it. This week she has started placing the pieces near their appropriate hole! So I have moved her stuffed toys to a different area and set up the coffee table as a puzzle station.
When I sing ‘if you’re happy and you know it’ she will clap her hands or kick her feet appropriately 🙂
The other day she ‘booped’ her friend Christiana’s nose ❤ She touched her nose and kind of went “bmp”, like she knows that’s a game you play with babies. And she hugged Christiana and Elena a few weeks ago too!
I bought her some crayons and we’re going to try and work on some drawing at some point.
She just started playing with cars and making a “brmm” sound 🙂 By cars I mean her lego car and one of our back massage things.
We go to the library once a week for Story Time. The other day at the library everyone had left except the teacher who was tidying up, and me, N and E rounding up our girls. The teacher put on some music while she tidied and Maeve started dancing 🙂 The teacher was so impressed and said she was “the Ginger Rogers of the toddler world” 🙂 She just loves to dance to music. I’ll be watching tv and there’ll be music in the background of a scene and she’ll register it and start dancing 🙂
I’m thinking of skipping the next swim class session and doing a music class instead. I don’t want to fill our week with too many activities, but I do want to do something social with other mums and tots once or twice a week.

Eating
She makes this cute little licking her lips kind of face when she wants food 🙂 She still isn’t much of a meat eater, but she’ll eat shepherds pie or cuban chicken/pork or hot dog on occasion. I try to feed her whatever I’m having for lunch or dinner but she still doesn’t have chewing teeth so it can be tricky. She has tried mexican, thai, and cuban.
Usually her breakfast is a handful of cheerios and a banana and maybe some other fruit (strawberries, rasberries or blueberries) if I have them. sometimes I’ll do oatmeal and raisins for her, but that can leave a cement  like sticky mess to clean up.
Lunch will be either scrambled egg & cheese, peanut butter on toast, cream cheese on toast or steamed veggies or pasta and sauce.
She gets half of a graham cracker around 5pm.
Dinner will be one or two of the above that she didn’t have at lunch or some of what we’re having for dinner.
She gets through 3 or 4 bottles of milk and one of watered down juice a day and then maybe half a bottle of water.
I have been lazy about teaching her to use a spoon. If I fill it with food and place it on the tray she’ll pick it up and eat from it, but she won’t fill it up herself. She’ll just reach in with her hands.

Straight after dinner she will often head to the bathroom (signing ‘bath’ as she goes). She’s not subtle 😛
Then it’s snuggle time in the towel, get dressed into pjs, brush teeth (we switched to a kiddie tooth brush this month) while reading books and then to bed.

She can help get her clothes off for bath/bed time, and attempts to put clothes on (mostly dresses, as she can reach that drawer, and mostly they just get put on her head). Her favourite ‘hat’ is a pair of shorts that she wears beret style 😉
She will get her shoes when she sees me getting my shoes. Sometimes she’ll carry her sling/moby wrap/shoes over to me and I swear she’s saying she wants to go out 🙂

Other stuff
She’s started biting. She still only has 6 teeth but boy do they hurt! She will go to blow a raspberry on my tummy, but about 50% of the time she will nip at my tummy with her teeth! Ouch. I’m never entirely certain what she’s going to do.
She can be gentle though. She will pet and kiss the pictures of cats and dogs in her books.

She was scared of a picture of a cat in one particular book (Scarface claw from ‘hairy maclary’) but over a few days we slowly got her to a place where she now says hi to the cat and pets him! Seriously the first time I read this book to her I turned the page and there was a scary picture of a cat and she clung to me and started crying. We read the book a few times a day just skipping over that page (she knew when it was coming up) and then we’d just look at that page and pet it and say meow quietly. And now she almost skips over the rest of the book to say hi to the cat 🙂

As I mentioned above, she kind of kisses. Sometimes she purses her lips and moves her head in for a kiss, sometimes she makes kissing sounds but doesn’t move her head in and sometimes she shoves her forehead against your face and goes “aaaaaa”?! Mostly she kisses her stuffed animals and pictures in books, but occasionally we can get her to kiss one of us. It’s not like we don’t kiss her enough to set an example?!

Oh! We swapped out her infant car seat for the next size up. And Christina found us an umbrella stroller for $5 at a garage sale 🙂

She has her 15 month doctors visit in 2 weeks.

The Part About Me:

I am being better about getting out and being social with my new friends. Most of the time I only see them when the kids are in tow, but I’m thinking it might be nice to go out for a girls night sometime (even if it’s an early evening thing) and leave the boys with bedtime duty. It’s hard to hold a proper conversation with 3 little ones getting into trouble. And I’m working on a post swim class lunch date with a couple of the mums from class too.
I have decided to push myself on from the 5k races and start training for a 10k. I have done a couple of races with Maeve in her stroller and have started going on training runs with Maeve. I am managing to get out once a week which is much better than once a month or so. This morning was day 3 of my training program, I ran 3.9miles in 44minutes. I also ran my fastest 5k ever last weekend 🙂 Lewis took Maeve in the stroller and I ran without her for the first time in a few weeks.
This week I started new ‘business hours’ for myself. I do Maeve activities/errands in the morning (skype, swim class, library, etc) and in the afternoon while she naps I work on paintings/crafts for Etsy and gift projects. I’m able to get a solid 2 hours of work done before she wakes up and sometimes I can get a few things done once she’s awake and again after she’s gone down for the night (depending on energy levels).
I’m trying to build my collection of work for entering art shows next year. I’m tweaking some paintings that haven’t been getting much attention on Etsy and work on some crafts for Christmas gifts.
The turn of the season has made me want to go through my closet again. I want new pants (slim fit, maybe some cords), maybe a nice sweater, some soft plaid flannel shirts. This year is a new winter boots year (last year I got a new winter coat).
We’re still house hunting. We have a viewing tomorrow. Not getting too excited as it’s only the 6th house we’ll have seen in 7+months of looking. But it would be super awesome if we could move in the new year… sigh.
I’m thinking about baby #2. This is partly due to period hormonal stuff but yeah. I look at videos from a year ago and can’t believe how much she’s grown. We’re still hoping to do house first, then puppy, then baby so I doubt we’ll even start trying for another year, but it’s in my thoughts.

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Maeve and Me at 14 months

I feel bad that Maeve’s 13month update just never happened. She hit the 13month mark on the last day of GenCon and it was enough to get my thoughts down about that whole experience that I didn’t have time/energy to notice what new things she was doing.

Just before GenCon we added another local mum and baby to our little circle of friends. Maeve now has Elena (who’s just hit the 10mo mark) and Christiana (who’ll be a year on the 25^th). She finds these babies fascinating. It’s amusing to watch her play with them and realize they can’t do all the same things she can, that they are ‘babies’. When she plays with Simon and Riley she definitely feels like one of the big kids. And I love watching her play with Simon! They look at each other and babble away and are definitely trying to communicate and play with one another. It won’t be long before they are getting into mischief together!

We started a new term of swim class. It’s the same level as last time but it’s a good way to keep the kids familiar and comfortable with water and swimming and make new friends. The parents in this group seem to be far more friendly than last term. I already know the names of 5 mothers (Anne, Susan, Jeni, Brett and Jackie) and am trying to schedule an after class lunch date with a couple of them 🙂 After the first class we met up with N, E and the girls and it turns out that one of the ladies in swim class (Jackie, who’s also British) is friends with E 🙂 So we might be adding Jackie and her little girl, Maisy, to our little group 🙂

Maeve enjoys playing in water, but there are parts of the class that are very upsetting for her (specifically laying on her back stuff). This week she got so upset I had to give up and just hold her in an upright position or she would scream. This evening in the bath she was bobbing her head into the water. She would be standing and then splash down really quickly and bob her head to the water and stand up again. She kept doing it over and over. I guess she’s trying to get comfortable with water in her face, but I ended up stripping off and climbing in the tub with her. I thought that maybe we could play some swim class games together in a ‘safe’ and familiar place. She still stiffens up certain limbs when we’re playing certain swimming games like when I’m trying to get her to move her arm through the water in a swimming fashion one arm will do it but the other arm locks up. I should talk to the teacher.

Maeve is talking more, but no real words. She says ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ but seems to use them interchangeably or call me dada. She will only use mama when she’s upset She went through a week or so of saying menumenumenu all the time and now says things like takeabite and other multi-syllabic ‘words’. She sounds Polish or Check or something 🙂 She will bring over a book (or a toy) and hand it to us saying “mee?” and then “takeabite” while she climbs onto our lap.

She continues to hate being lain down on her back. She will fuss and cry during changes unless we do them standing up. She still hates changing tables in public restrooms, she gets scared when I put her on one. She hates the part of swim class where we lay on our backs.

She’s showing signs of understanding us. I can ask her to go find one of her toys (a lion or a dog or a monkey, or her baby doll or cow) and she’ll try to find it. She still has issues with toys that aren’t those listed above, but it’s progress! She will also make some attempt at finding a specific book. Like she knows what story comes from what picture book and will study the cover to think if that’s the right one. At least that’s what I tell myself. We have a few books that are part of a series (Maisy, Spot, Llama Llama, Eric Carl) or by the same author/illustrator and she seems to know this. I can also ask her to find her bottle or blanket or shoes and she’s getting better at finding them. The other week I asked her if she was tired and wanted a nap, wanted to go to bed and she walked into her room and pointed at her bed!

Oh! Reflux update! At the end of August we stopped taking the Prevacid completely! She started spitting up again on occasion, and has been a bit fussy about some things, but is generally still sleeping okay at night so I think her fussiness might be more to do with teething. I think tooth #7 is coming in and she has been snotty and drooly and off her food the past week or so.

Sometimes I feel a little lonely. I can go to a party or brunch or whatever occasion and see all my friends, but I spend most of my time following Maeve around making sure she doesn’t fall down stairs or get into things she shouldn’t, making sure she eats enough and doesn’t just throw it all on the floor. It’s better than when she was puking and crying all the time I guess, but I miss having a conversation with my friends. I’m happy that I have a few local mums to meet with as they understand the stilted conversations that now occur.

Last week (Friday the 13^th, wouldn’t you know) we met up with N and Elena at the park. We were hoping to meet E and Christiana too, but apparently E lost her phone for 2hours and had no way of contacting us.  We met another local mum (Jenny) and her kids, Rebel (almost 2) and Sunday (3mo). Maeve was having a great time running around with Rebel and Elena was practicing her walking. At one point Rebel and Maeve went to the jungle gym and I wasn’t quick enough to get up there with her so I walked along the outside trying to get her to hold my hand. She walked all the way across the wobbly bridge by herself then sat down and rolled off the far side of the bridge between the gap in the railing! She must have fallen 4 and half feet to the ground! I felt awful that I hadn’t managed to even attempt to catch her and she cried for a couple of minutes but then got straight back to climbing! I managed to distract her away from the jungle gym and she was running around again when she tripped and fell and smacked her face on the low wall surrounding the play area. She actually slammed her bottom teeth into her upper pallet and was bleeding a bit. It looked really bad and I was shaken up just seeing all the blood (even though I know mouths bleed a lot and heal quickly). We got some ice for her to suck on but she was crying for almost an hour and I don’t blame her.

This week was N’s turn to panic about Elena. All weekend Elena had had a fever but was feeling well enough by Tuesday that we were able to meet up at the park for a little bit. Nuria was changing her diaper and noticed a rash on her tummy which we both put down to a reaction to detergent. A little  bit later I get a call from Nuria saying that the rash had spread all over her torso and up her neck to her face and head and she was taking her to the doctor! Turns out she had Roseola (which I’d never heard of). Thankfully because Maeve and I had been suffering from a cold I’d been keeping my distance from Elena whenever we got together during what turns out to have been the contagious period. Roseola starts with a fever for 2 days and loss of appetite, then the fever goes and a rash appears.

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