My crazy little Alaina baby has me wrapped around her little finger. Just look how sweet this angel is...
Over the last month or 2 she has REALLY started to get some personality. She has gone from a sweet little baby to a toddler girl who makes her feelings known and holds her own with the other kids. Her favorite word is "no" right now....and "uppy mama". When I tell her that I have to put her down or can't give her what she wants, she gives the cutest little puppy dog faces. She knows how to manipulate me!
On this particular day, Angie brought Swedish fish for me on daycare appreciation day. I had given one to all of the kids. Alaina threw a tantrum over not getting more....
I'm actually happy to say that the tantrums have gone way down. I think that part of the tantrums going down is that she has a core vocabulary now. Words she says include more, cracker, bar, please, dada, mama, stop, hi, bye, eye, uppy, cheese, nana (banana), sit down, wawa, ah done/down, no, uh oh, baby, owie, beh button, ball, nigh nigh, me, bar (for granola bar), shoes, weeee. She says "shhhh" with the one finger over her mouth when someone else is crying. She holds out her hand and yells "stop!" when the kids get too far ahead of me on a walk. She occasionally says her sister's names. She says "Ehsie" for Elsie and "Owa" for Cora. She starts a lot of words with "I wa" for I want and then babbles a lot. It can be difficult to determine what "I wa ba wawa mama peaaaaase," really means but I generally just give her her sippy cup in those moments and hope it works.
She loves pushing her walker around outside. That is an activity I started to get her up on her feet for longer periods of time.
She is a TOTAL mama's girl. Cora was just like this at this age (and still is pretty much). If I am around, she wants me. Whenever I open the door from working out the very first thing I hear is foosteps or knees coming at me and "mama mama mama mama!" After I finished the half marathon, she was ready to be held by me right away....
Lucky girl with her sweet cousins....
If I can get her off my side long enough, she has fun playing with favorite toys. She likes the little people, peg boards with stackers, babies, trains, clunky puzzles, clunker toys, ball pound maze, balls in general, painitng with water, coloring for short periods, pushing a baby stroller around, etc.
My snuggle bug. She wants me to hold her all of the time and likes to guard my lap from others when I am sitting but it is not all that common for her to actually cuddle with me.
Her "cheeeeeese" face. She will do this whenever she seems my cell phone up. :)
She has made a stance that she likes to eat like a big person. Actually, it is probably more about eating off my plate. I was breaking off pieces of chicken nachos for her on this day but she preferred to take big chunks and use her fork to dig into my plate instead.
The first time I put the little miss in pigtails I took a million pictures of her because of the cuteness!
Loves hanging with her sisters. They all had freezie pops and Alaina was either too scared of hers or thought it was too cold because she kept setting it behind her but yet didn't want help eating it and didn't want anyone else to touch it.
The biggest concern and area of progress for Alaina between 15-18 months is her knee walking. I should really take a video of it to look back on. It is so second nature to me now that I don't really notice but whenever someone new sees it they laugh and point it out to me as if it is the first time she is doing it. It's funny. And the only reason I say it is funny now is because she is finally mostly walking on her feet. Here is a synopsis of her knee walking and walking in general....
13 months - she started walking on her knees. During this same time period, she was cruising along furniture more on her feet. At that time, I thought that the knee walking was something she'd do for a month or so while she transitioned into walking. This actually took over as her primary mode of getting around. The better she got with knee walking, the less she was willing to be on her feet at all. She would pop up onto her feet to reach things but then go back to her knees to move on to the next thing. Between 14-15 months she was stubbornly in this habit and I would work daily on getting her to do more on her feet. I would force her into doing push toys on her feet instead of her knees. The more I tried to work on things with her the more stubborn she got about doing things her own way.
15 months - brought her to her well child check and brought up my concerns. The pediatrician watched her zip around on her knees and said he had never seen anything like it. She refused to bare weight at that appointment. He was torn because as far as he could tell she seemed normal physically but recommended that a PT see her in case there was something he was missing. He also asked the advice of a second Pediatrician who said the same things. About a week after that appointment I called NP's early intervention and asked if I could get her screened by a PT. It took a couple weeks before they were able to come out so she was almost 16 months when they came. They pointed out the great things she was doing and didn't have anything concrete to point out or suggest. They too had not really seen a child who does this. They were an awesome couple of ladies and I was happy that I had them come out to bend an ear about it. I continued to consult with the PT through the Spring on things.
16 months - About a week or so after the ladies were over, Alaina took her first steps. My OT friend showed a trick to get her to walk to me. Over the next 2 days she repeated this trick over and over while I showed it off. Then she absolutely 100% stopped getting on her feet. She totally backtracked and was mad at me about making her walk and be on her feet. Not only did she stop walking but she stopped using push toys and everything. I had to back off completely.
17 months -
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