Savannah turned 18 months old on October 29th. It’s hard to believe that this time a year ago, she was just starting to sit up on her own. Now, we have a full-blown toddler on the move and into everything!
I am thinking that Savannah probably weighs about 25 pounds, but we will see for sure when we go for her checkup next week. (Update: On 11/14/16 ( about 2 weeks after she turned 18 months, Savannah weighed 25 lbs 13 oz (85th percentile) and was 32.5 inches long (75th percentile). She is definitely a little meatier than Brooklyn was at this age. I love how her belly pokes out, especially after she eats. She is wearing size 4 diapers (although they may not fit much longer!), size 5 – 5.5 shoes, and mostly 18-24 month clothes. Some 18 month stuff is getting a little snug/short, so I think 24 month clothes are really fitting best at this point. Savannah’s hair is slowly coming in, and it’s still pretty blond. I’m assuming her hair will be straight since Brooklyn’s was obviously curly at 18 months. Time will tell I guess! Her hair looks wild more often than not. It’s a combination of her twirling it in the back (it’s a comfort thing) and rubbing her hands in her hair while she eats. I’ve kind of given up on it looking presentable at this point :) Savannah had 10 teeth at 15 months old, and she is just now getting tooth #11. It’s been nice to have a few months off from teething! We may be starting another teeth explosion…guess we’ll find out soon enough!
Savannah is still a mover and a climber! I wouldn’t say she’s running just yet, but sometimes when Daddy chases her, it’s more like an out-of-control speed walk ;) She is constantly carrying around the yellow chairs from the play kitchen and using them as her step stools. I catch her climbing onto the kitchen and dining room tables fairly often. Climbing the ladder on the swing set is no big deal anymore. She loves climbing the stairs at Paw and Rae Rae’s house too. She has even figured out how to pull hard enough to open the fridge herself. It’s pretty crazy! I guess the benefit of being the younger sibling is that you get to watch and learn how to do all these things at an earlier age.
I wouldn’t say Savannah LOVES books, but she will sit to look at books if she’s in the right mood. Sometimes we have to just skip pages and only read a page or two before she’s ready to move on. Savannah doesn’t really have much interest in TV shows/movies at this point. She will occasionally stop and watch something for a few minutes but not for the entire thing. However, her attention span when playing with toys is much longer than Brooklyn’s was at this age! Savannah can sit and entertain herself with the same toy for quite a while sometimes. It’s pretty nice! Savannah can sometimes point to pictures in books to identify them (“Where is the dog?” “Where is the tree?”) depending on what the object is. She uses her index finger to point to things up close like in books, but uses her whole hand to point to things far away. So silly! She can also point to several body parts correctly: hair, eyes, nose, ears, mouth, teeth, hands, feet, and belly button.
Savannah is a pretty good sleeper these days, knock on wood! We went through a stretch about a month ago where she was waking up once a night for several weeks, but thankfully we are past that now. We generally try to put her to bed around 8 PM, and she will usually sleep until at least 7 AM and sometimes as late as 8 AM. If she wakes up before 7 AM, she’s usually crying like she’s still tired, so sometimes we’ll just put her paci back in and she’ll go back to sleep. She is great about going to sleep at night and for naps…she never cries! As long as she’s tired, she just lays there with her paci and goes right to sleep. She has pretty much transitioned down to 1 nap per day at this point. She usually takes it starting anywhere from 12 to 1 PM on most days, but it just depends on what we’re doing that day. If we are out running errands in the car around lunchtime, she’ll usually fall asleep in the car on the way home. Thankfully, it has gotten easier to move her from her car seat into the crib without her waking up. Her naps usually last about 1.5 hours…sometimes longer if she’s really tired.
Savannah is a good eater overall, although she has gotten a little pickier over the last few months. I can almost always count on her to eat more than Brooklyn does though! :) She eats all different kinds of food—fruits, veggies, pasta, and even meat sometimes. She even ate cauliflower this week! Interestingly enough, she doesn’t really care for cereal. She usually leaves most of her Cheerios untouched in her tray for breakfast. Can she really be my daughter if she doesn’t like cereal? :) She LOVES to drink milk and will go to the fridge and “ask” for it quite often throughout the day. She doesn’t love water (especially if she has the choice to drink milk), but will drink it when she’s thirsty.
Savannah is very tenderhearted. Generally, her cries have only one volume: LOUD. And she can turn her cry off and on like she’s flipping a switch ;) Overall, I feel like she is very obedient for her age. She understands almost everything we ask her to do, and most of the time she’ll do it without much hesitation. However, she has started testing her boundaries sometimes and doing things we tell her not to do like play with the cat food and touch buttons on the receiver. But get ready if you get onto her! If you talk sternly to her or even spank her, she just loses it. I’m talking about wailing and crying that goes on and on and on. The look on her face is like, “Mom, how could you do this to me???” It’s sort of funny and pitiful at the same time :) She is also scared to death of the vacuum cleaner—as in, if we even talk about vacuuming she starts whimpering and crying. I try to vacuum when she’s not around or at least let her sit with her paci next to Brooklyn on the couch for comfort :)
Savannah loves to laugh and be tickled. She can be really silly! She and Brooklyn can entertain each other pretty well most of the time. Whatever Brooklyn does, Savannah tries to copy. Savannah wants to be a “big kid” just like her big sister! They don’t always get along, and when they fight, Savannah holds her own. I’ve caught her pulling Brooklyn’s hair several times, and she’s even bitten her once. When they do get along though, it’s really nice! Savannah likes other kids, but it generally takes her a few minutes to warm up especially in a new place. She has started going to Bible class and did great the first time. Since then, she has cried when she goes in and sometimes throughout the whole class :( Hopefully she will get used to it soon! She is generally wary of most adults that she doesn’t know very well, and she doesn’t let too many people hold her at church without crying. Savannah likes to mimic things that big people do. She loves getting my shoes out the closet and trying them on. She also likes brushing her teeth, using rags to “clean” with, and pretending to sweep and mop.
Savannah is coming along slowly but surely with her speech development. We are still doing Early Intervention, which is going well. Her special instructor, Kaci, comes to our house for 30 minutes at a time one morning a week. Kaci has taught her some sign language which has been really helpful in communicating nonverbally. Savannah knows the signs for eat, drink, milk, please, thank you, more, down, book, open, close, out, in, and finished, She can’t do all of the signs perfectly, but she generally does well enough where we can understand. She is starting to babble a little more and “talk” using her own language that we can’t really understand. Some days she will “talk” a lot more than others. She still isn’t really saying any words consistently that we can understand. Example: she was repeating the word “mama” for several weeks, but hasn’t said it in a week or two. This week, she has started saying a few animal sounds: “aaaahhh” for a lion, “ssssss” for a snake, and “ooooo” for a cow. She also says “eeeee yaaaaa!” when she hands us something, as if to say “Here you go!”. Lately, when she goes to the fridge for her milk, she will whine “mmmmmm” like she’s trying to say “milk”. She has even repeated some 2 syllable words like “rainbow”, “water”, and “Grandpa”, but it’s always just a one-time thing. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy analyzing what she says and whether or not she said an actual word or I’m just hearing things. I just need to relax, I think :) She has definitely made a lot of improvement over the last 3 months though! She may just be one of those kids that doesn’t speak until one day when they start speaking in sentences! :)
Favorite things: being tickled, playing peekaboo, playing outside, taking baths, being silly, drinking milk, twirling her hair, sucking her paci (if we let her, she’d keep it in her mouth all day), exploring the house and getting stuff out of cabinets, and coloring with crayons/colored pencils.
Dislikes: anytime she gets in trouble, the vacuum cleaner, being forced to sit still at church/the library, anytime when Mommy leaves and she notices…
Savannah, you are such a sweetie! We’ve loved seeing all the things you’ve learned lately, and we’re excited to see how you grow over the next several months!
