Abigail turned 18 months old on February 16th. She is growing and learning so much every week. She is also packed full of personality…as I’ll get to in a minute. We love our baby girl, even when she tries our patience! ;)
Abigail had her latest checkup on Wednesday, and she is now 20 pounds 15 oz (30th percentile) and 31.5 inches (50th percentile). Those percentiles are not adjusted for her prematurity, so she is definitely catching up. It’s amazing that she is at an average height compared to other full-term 18 month olds! And she is finally over 20 pounds…haha. She is wearing mostly 12-18 month size clothes. She is definitely tall enough for 18 month clothes, but the pants are usually too big in the waist. So, she really wears mostly 12 month pants that are flooding ;) They look like capris when she sits down! She is still wearing mainly size 3 shoes, but they are getting snug, so I’m thinking she will be in size 4s any day now. I’ve done a bad job of keeping records, but I think she is working on her last 12 month molar right now, which makes 11 teeth total. And she is still wearing size 3 diapers…haha! We may never make it to size 5s before she potty trains :) She is also slowly but surely getting a little bit of hair. It’s still not very noticeable, but it is there. Hopefully by next winter it will be enough to keep her head warm!
My goal was to nurse Abigail through this winter, and so far it looks like we are going to make it there with no problem. She is still nursing twice a day (first thing in the morning and right before bed). Occasionally, she will miss one of those times and just nurse once a day, and it doesn’t seem to bother her. I’m ready to be done with it just because it will simplify our morning and evening routines, but at the same time, once we’re done, that’s it. There won’t be any more nursing babies after her, so I have mixed feelings about calling it quits. It will be the end of an era for sure. I think I can confidently say that Abigail is definitely our pickiest eater as a young toddler. Savannah is fairly picky at her current age, but I think even she ate better than Abigail at 18 months. This child just rarely eats much of anything for supper…seriously. I think the only vegetable she will touch is sweet potatoes. She loves fruit, PB&J, crackers, bread, and fruit snacks. She occasionally eats meat. It’s usually hit or miss with stuff like spaghetti. We don’t cater to her pickiness, so if she chooses not to eat what we have for dinner, then she just doesn’t eat until breakfast the next morning. Maybe that’s harsh, but I don’t want her to learn that she can just refuse to eat and then be given other foods that she likes instead. Hopefully this is just a stage that she will grow out of sooner rather than later. At least she is gaining weight and growing well…so she’s obviously taking in enough calories somehow!
Abigail is sleeping pretty well at night these days for the most part. She will occasionally cry out in the night, but not too often thankfully. She still sleeps in her crib and uses a pacifier to go to sleep. Savannah loves to throw stuffed animals in there for Abigail to sleep with, so there is usually a big assortment of “friends” for her to cuddle with. She got a stuffed moose for Christmas, and if I ask her to, she will give it a big hug at bedtime before I leave the room. It’s so cute! She usually goes to bed between 7:30 and 8 PM and will wake up anywhere between 6:30 and 7 AM. I think she gets woken up by Brooklyn getting ready and eating breakfast before school, but I don’t really know how to prevent that from happening. We are in a tough position with her naps right now: she’s not quite ready for one nap/day most of the time, but she fights a second nap like she’s not tired. She really needs a first nap by about 10:30 or 11 AM, so it’s just too early to be her only nap of the day. We aim for a second nap sometime after school (3:30 or 4 PM), but she doesn’t always fall asleep. It also depends on what errands we have for the day—she frequently falls asleep on the way home if we are out close to lunchtime. I can usually transfer her to the crib and keep her asleep, so that helps! Basically, we just kind of play it by ear every day depending on what’s going on.
We finally have a WALKER! Abigail has just started walking well in the last couple of weeks. Her primarily method of getting around prior to that was scooting on her bottom, so she never crawled traditionally on her hands and knees. It’s so interesting how kids develop differently. Our pediatrician has always told me that crawling is not a developmental milestone, and I guess she was right. Abigail is walking so well now that she doesn’t lose her balance and fall very often like she did at first. She is also FINALLY able to stand up from the floor without pushing up on the wall or a piece of furniture. She can squat down to pick something up off the floor too. Now that she is walking, she is even more sneaky because I can’t hear her very well like I could when she was scooting. She is doing pretty well with the stairs and can crawl up no problem and come down on her belly. We baby-proofed the landing and the bottom of our stairs (added extra padding), which makes me feel a little better because she will still occasionally fall down the stairs. Last week she had so many bumps and bruises on her face that she looked like somebody beat her up!
Abigail is packed full of personality! One of the NICU nurses told Travis right after Abigail was born that “this baby has spunk!”, and boy was she right. So much for getting that laid back, easy going third baby…Abigail is definitely not it. If she’s not happy with us, she definitely lets us know. She can scream and cry and throw the biggest tantrums. We thought maybe she cried so much because her ears hurt (she had chronic fluid on her ears and got tubes in late December), but she has been just as cranky since then as she was before ;) She is stubborn as a mule and continually tests the limits and disobeys what we ask her to do. We thought Brooklyn was stubborn as a toddler, but I think Abigail may have her beat! I can see glimpses at times that she is starting to mind and understand the importance of obeying, but overall we have a lot of work to do. We just have to channel her head-strong nature in the right direction :)
Although she can be stubborn and irritable a lot, Abigail can also be super sweet when she wants to be. On several nights recently, she has hurried over to Travis when he gets home from work and held onto his legs like she’s excited to see him. She also gives really great hugs and can blow kisses too. She loves to wave bye-bye and uses her whole arm to wave. She is starting to learn how to be a helper and likes to close the dishwasher for me after I load it up. She also helps clean up toys and instruments at music class like the big kids do. We haven’t really worked with her on cleaning up her toys at home yet, but I have a feeling that will start pretty soon. She acts shy around people she doesn’t know very well, but usually warms up after a few minutes.
Abigail is just starting to get interested in books and will bring me a book and want to sit in my lap to look at it. (Until recently, she would flip through a book in about 2 seconds and be ready to move on, so we haven’t done much reading with her. She just wasn’t interested.) She loves our cat, Gabby, but hasn’t figured out how to pet her gently yet. She chases her and tries to touch her/pull her fur any chance she gets. She is also into everything, exploring kitchen and bathroom cabinets and leaving a trail of destruction behind her. She loves Daddy’s glasses case so much that he had to find a new, higher spot to keep it because she was always grabbing the case and taking his glasses out. She just wants to check everything out and won’t stop until she does. She is also a bit of a daredevil—at our neighborhood playground, there are two slides. She goes straight for the big one every time and has never even gone down the little one. When she gets to the top of the slide, she just launches her body over the edge without hesitation. I have a feeling she’ll be riding rollercoasters with her daddy one day!
Abigail has learned so many new words lately and is starting to try to repeat a lot of what we say these days. Brooklyn and Savannah love getting Abigail to talk and mimic what they say. Here are the words/phrases that Abigail can say (as many as I can think of, at least): mama, dada, bye bye, night night, Woo Woo (Gabby’s nickname), meow, woof, ewwww, ah choo, ball, boo, uh oh, all done, thank you. If we say Peek-A…..she will say, “BOO!” The girls love to get her to repeat “Ewww!”, especially after a stinky diaper change ;) She has recently started calling for “mama” when she’s upstairs, like she’s looking for me. She also tries to sing some of the songs from music class when we listen to them in the car (“doo doo doo” or “dee dee dee”). We have taught her a few signs, and she knows how to sign: more, finished, down, & please. I don’t think we’ll have to get as extensive with the signing as we did with Savannah, but it’s nice for now that she can tell us if she wants more food or if she’s ready to get down from her highchair without using words. I love this stage when babies start talking a lot…it’s so cute and fun!
Likes: chasing Gabby, unloading the silverware from the dishwasher (even when it’s dirty), playing with her sisters’ toys, climbing the stairs, going outside, taking baths, exploring and causing havoc
Dislikes: being carried by Brooklyn and Savannah (she used to giggle, but now she squirms and cries!), most healthy foods, being told “no”, getting left out of the fun that her big sisters are having, strangers that get too close/try to hold her
Abigail, it’s hard to believe you are 18 months old! You are full of spunk and energy, but I wouldn’t expect anything less (I don’t think we were destined to have calm, quiet children…haha). We love you, Peapod, and are excited to see how you grow in the coming months!
