Jessica is 18 months old tomorrow! I can't believe how fast time flies! It feels like it wasn't too long ago that I was getting ready to give birth to her. She has really gotten to be so much fun to play with! She is so sweet and snuggly; much different from the first 6 months of her life! That was a very trying time for us!! Seeing her now makes it all worth it though!
Nap time has become a bit harder then it used to be. She used to snuggle for a minute or so and then want to go into the crib. We would lay her down and she would snuggle up to her stuffed animals and go right to sleep. Now she snuggles for about 10 seconds and when I try to put her down in the crib she decides she wants to snuggle longer. Do you know how hard it is to put a baby down when all she wants to do is hug you?!?!?! So we snuggle for a little longer and then I put her down. Sometimes she grabs her animals and goes right to sleep, sometimes so sits in there and sings or talks for a while (sometimes as long as 45 minutes) and sometimes she screams and screams until she falls asleep. Going in there to calm her doesn't seem to help, it seems to make it worse because she thinks she won't have to go to sleep and she is even madder when we leave again. This morning I put her down around 10am and she jabbered on for about 25 minutes saying things like uh oh, up, bye bye, hi, mama, dada, banana, car....I guess she is just practicing her words. The cutest thing of all is that she can say her name now!!! It sounds more like Je-si-sa but that is close enough for an 18 month old.
Yesterday I went out into the back yard with Jessica and she walked around while I started to weed the vegetable garden. When she saw what I was doing she got very interested and wanted to come see. She spent the first 5 minutes just wanting to sit on my lap and hug so we did that for a bit then she decided she wanted to see what all this dirt was about. So she sat down and proceeded to pock at it while making a (this is really gross) face. I think she got used to it and began to enjoy it because by the end she was grabbing handfuls of dirt and throwing them up in the air and giggling. She got really excited when I told her it was time to go in and have a bath.
Potty training has begun!! What I am doing is I think what Michelle did with her kids. She gets 1 mini marshmallow for sitting on the potty, 2 for going number 1 and 3 for going number 2. Right now we are still working on just sitting on the potty. She seems to have put the connection together (if I sit on this spot I get a yummy treat) so she will go in the bathroom sit on the potty for about a microsecond then jump up and run to the sink saying "mo mo". I will give her one and she will walk right back over to the potty and do the exact same thing again and of course will want another mo mo. Once she gets the idea that she has to sit on the potty to go potty then it will be time to get some pull ups or something so we don't have to undress her to go potty.
Here are her 18 month stats:
Weight: 24 lbs 3 oz = 30th percentile
Height: 31" = 25th percentile
Head Circumference: 46.5 cm = 65 percentile
Teeth: 4 front ones on top and 2 molars in the back on top, 3 front ones on bottom and that is it.....I assume more will be coming in eventually!
Wears 18 Month clothing
Wears size 4-5 shoes
Wears size 4 diapers
Here are some recent pics of Jessica.
