17 Months
Friday, September 19, 2008

I always forget to do birthday posts for Scout, but for some reason, I remembered that she is 17 months old today. This is at such a fun and exciting (yet somewhat challenging) age! In the last few weeks she has learned so many new words:

Glasses - "slassy"
Raining - "mingning"
Doggy - she says this one perfectly now - it used to just be "Dah!"
Truck - "cock" (tee hee :)
Outside - "side"
Socks - "soss"
Eat - another one she says perfectly.
Keys - sounds alot like "cheese"
Pee-U - "pay-oh!"
I see you - sounds a lot like "see ya"
Owl - "ow"
Toes - "towel"
Nose - "no"
No-no - "now-now"
Bug - "bope"

Words already in her vocabulary were: mommy, daddy, home, nigh-night, hi, bye-bye, baby, cheese, peepee, potty (pronounced "pah-pah"), cereal, hat, ball, hot, see ya, mouth, and eye

She does repeat words/sounds sometimes without knowing the meaning and then she'll never say it again, so I don't count those words. When I read the Dr. Seuss book Hop on Pop to her, she repeats me when I say "hop", "pop", "pup", and "up"...but otherwise, she doesn't say those words on her own.

She puts a few words together, like: "Daddy home?", "Daddy bye-bye?" and "Bad dog!"

She's still signing, but we haven't taught her any new signs lately...I suppose just out of laziness. She knows: potty, eat, drink, more, bath, diaper change, cereal, daddy, (never does the sign for mommy for some reason), nurse, milk, water, ball, and play.

Scout's been having some pretty horrific tantrums, but I hear that's common around this age. Her fits usually don't last long and most of the time it's fairly easy to distract her from whatever she was screaming about with something else.

She's pretty headstrong and will fight for what she wants...at least when it comes to the things that she shouldn't have and I'm trying to take away from her. Something feels so silly and comical about wrestling a toddler to the ground, trying to pry an open tube of lip gloss from her white-knuckled fist. And yet scenes like that happen around here all the time. It's funny though, when she's playing with other kids she is much more passive and usually won't put up much of a fight if another child tries to take what she is playing with. Go figure.

She can also be very affectionate and sweet. We get hugs and kisses from her all the time (okay, well sometimes we have to coax her) and it melts my heart.

Car rides and errands have become a breeze with her. She was a total car seat hater during the first year of her life, but now she doesn't seem to mind it. She happily rides in the stroller and shopping cart for long periods of time about 80% of the time.

She nurses about 4-5 times in a 24 hour period: when she gets up in the morning, when she goes down for her nap, when she's up from her nap, and when she goes to bed. Sometimes she gets up once (or twice - but that's VERY unusual) in the middle of the night and needs me to nurse her back to sleep.

Something that's been on my mind a lot is how we're going to transition into falling asleep without nursing. I'm not sure when this should happen and how to go about doing it. Today, I was thinking that now might be a good time to take steps in that direction because she carried around a "My Banky" bear (that she had never shown much interest in before) all morning, hugging it and rubbing her face all over it. She kept wanting me to spread it out on her back, then she would say "Nigh-night", and I would rub her back while she batted her sleepy eyes and sighed. I nursed her down for a nap shortly after that while she had her blankie clutched tightly in her fists. If this new found fondness for this blankie continues, I'm wondering if it would be smart for me to take this as an opportunity to transition her from nursing to sleep to snuggling with her blankie.

I am surprised I am even typing those words right now. I have always had a very relaxed attitude toward the idea of weaning and thought that she'd be a lot older before I started tossing around the idea of night-weaning her. I don't want to wean her altogether. But for some reason, I just have it in my mind that we need to start moving towards getting her to sleep without nursing.

That said, if I start trying it and she flips out and is not willing to let her blankie replace nursing while falling asleep, I don't think I could push it. I don't think I could force anything. I want it to be as slow and natural as possible. I guess we'll see.

Anyway, Happy 17 Months to you, my sweet little girl! It's been the best 17 months of my entire life.

Labels: being sappy, breastfeeding, scout talking, sign language, travels

posted by Unkempt Mommy @ 7:19 AM,

4 Comments:

At Fri Sep 19, 12:56:00 PM CDT, Motherhood for Dummies said...: oh I love the Pay-Oh! too cute
At Fri Sep 19, 02:33:00 PM CDT, Giggly said...: Love your blog! My son is also 17 months!
At Fri Sep 19, 07:21:00 PM CDT, Giggly said...: I tried to add your blog to my favorites, it wouldn't work :(
Well, I'll bookmark it anyway.
At Sat Sep 20, 11:38:00 PM CDT, Two Lines On a Stick said...: Happy 17 months, Scout!

Love your friend, Bailey