Learning and Growing Every Day

My baby girl is not a baby anymore.  She is 16 months old now and every day she seems to learn something new and grow a little more.  I LOVE this stage with her.  It's so exciting to just watch her and see her little mind tick.

She has started pointing to her nose, eyes, hair, and mouth when you ask her where they are.  Sometimes she points to mine instead of hers.

She blows kisses now.  We do this at night when she tells her Daddy night night.  Then she runs to the stairs and starts climbing up the stairs herself to go to bed.  She's climbing down the stairs really well now too.  When we get upstairs and I tell her "Let's take a bath" she runs to the bathroon and says "bath".

I love her bedtime routine.  She gets a bath, brushes her teeth, and sometimes blow dries her hair.  We get her PJs on then read a book or 2 while she cuddles in my lap.  She picks the books out for me that she wants me to read.  Then we always read a story or 2 from her rhyming Bible, say our bedtime prayers, then I rock her and cuddle while we listen to her bedtime song.  (Sometimes I rock her longer if I just need some extra cuddle time that night.)  She's almost never asleep after her song, but she knows it's time to go to bed and usually lays down really good and goes to sleep.  I always say, "Night, night.  I love you.  Sweet dreams, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bit."  That's something I used to always say to my mom every single night when I was little.  It became habit and now I say it to Katie.

Katie's hair is getting so long and is kind of a mess.  I don't want to cut it until it's long enough for a real haircut and I want her bangs to grow out too.  So right now it's in an awkward stage.  If it's not pulled back, then it's in her face.  So sometimes I blow dry it to try to get it to stay out of her face.  It doesn't really last long.  She likes to grab the brush and try to brush her own hair.

We brush her teeth every day now.  Some days she opens her mouth for me, but usually it's a bit of a struggle.  Especially with her top teeth.

Sometimes when I pick her up she pats my back (because that's what I do to her to soothe her when she's upset or help her go to sleep.)  I love it when she does this!

She makes a silly face where she scrunches her nose up.  I'm not sure why she does it, but it's cute.

More words: cracker, juice, tigger, shoes, nose, yellow, purple, tractor

She's learning her farm animal sounds really well.  She knows "moo", "baa", "neigh", "quack", and "meow".  I think "meow" is my favorite.  We have some farm animal touch and feel flash cards.  When they're scattered on the floor we can ask her for each of those animals and she will find the right animal. 

I had on a blue school shirt a couple of weeks ago with yellow letters on it.  She kept pointing to the yellow letters and saying "yellow".  I didn't know she knew her colors and thought maybe it was coincidence.  I asked her teachers the next day if they do colors and she said, "Oh yeah.  Every day.  Katie's favorite colors are yellow and purple!"  She doesn't say her colors consistently yet though. 

She likes to shake her finger a the dogs and say "no no!" And she likes to play with the dog bowls. I heard some splashing one night when I was cooking and found her like this. She had been splashing in the dogs' water bowl. No we don't "let" her play in their water bowls, but she does every chance she gets. I've even caught her standing in the water bowls before!

Why does she have a big red nose you ask?  She has a couple of rocking chairs at home and she likes to kneel backwards in the seat, hold onto the back of the chair, and rock.  She tried this at school a few weeks ago but it wasn't a rocking chair.  She she had a pretty nasty fall and scratched her nose up really good on the carpet.

This is her book basket.  Today she took all the books out and crawled into the basket herself.  She barely fits in there.

I'm starting to try to teach her to help out around the house.  If we tell her to put a toy in her basket she will do it.  Just 1 toy at a time then I have to tell her to put the next one in.  We were telling her today to "clean up" and she started saying "pick up" as she handed her toys to us.  I guess they say "pick up" a lot at school. 

I also let her "help" me do laundry and unload the dish washer.  for the dish washer I let her take out her plates, plastic cups, silverware, etc and hand them to me.  Then she closes the dish washer door for me.  She likes to help take the clothes out of the washer and put them in the dryer.  She needs lots of guidance from me, but it's a start.  She also takes clothes out of the dryer for me and hands them to me one at a time while I hang them up or fold them.  I hate putting laundry away but it's fun when Katie gets to help me.  I let her push the buttons to turn the washer and dryer on but that may backfire.  She doesn't know which buttons to push.  I have to show her.  But today when we were in the laundry room she just randomly started pushing buttons on the dryer.  She finally pushed the on button but there wasn't any laundry in there.  :)

I've started trying to let her make choices.  For snack I will hold out 2 options and ask her which one she wants.  She looks at them, points to 1, and that's what I give her.  I'm not sure if she understands that she's choosing one and that's what she's going to get, but I'm sure after doing this for a while she will catch on.