15 months update

It feels like Christmas was so long ago and now I’m ready for Spring! I feel like Maddy grew soooo much over the holidays and so here is her update.

Ooops! I just went back to check her 14 months update and I realized that I didn’t actually do one!! I blame all the craziness of the holiday season. I guess that explains why I feel like she’s changed so much. Ha ha! Well she is still crawling around but she is a super whiz at it now. I can no longer leave her somewhere and quickly dash in and out to grab something. She loves to crawl around the coffee table as we chase her around and pretend to catch her. Lots of laugh and great for tiring her out in hopes of a nice long nap! She is also doing a lot of furniture cruising. She’s getting much faster and can now do it with her hands full of toys as well. On the actual walking she can walk somewhat quickly if we hold her hands and she can use the toy walker to walk all on her own. The only problem is that she doesn’t quite know how to turn it around so when she hits a wall she’s stuck.

As far as eating, Maddy eats just about everything. We just haven’t given her nuts, shellfish or strawberries yet. She’s had starwberry yogurt though so I think we’re good. She is fully eating what we eat and since the holidays I’ve been busy cooking and freezing things, being sure to freeze in portions for three now. She really LOVES the food at her daycare so I’ve been going to T&T to try and cook ‘more Chinese’ style. I even grilled Lucy to see what and how she makes it. After all the work I offered it Maddy. Didn’t want it. What?!?! Luckily I tried again and I found that she likes to eat if I shovel the food into her mouth! She wouldn’t use the spoon herself. Didn’t want to use her hands. Wouldn’t take it if I tried spooning it into her mouth. As soon as I left it in the bowl and then used the spoon as a shovel, she ate an entire bowl of noodles!! I guess that’s her Chinese side coming out since that is how we eat rice from a bowl. She’s also a Dutch girl at heart because she loves Pannenkoek (thin crepe-like pancakes). They freeze well, so I make a bunch and she has one just about everyday for snack. She’ll have them with mashed bananas, cream cheese, melted cheese or shredded apple. I even put some bean paste in there once and she was all over it!

Playtime is fun and changing too. She now likes to feed her stuffed animals and dolls. In Revelstoke she really loved Auntie Lyn’s old bottle for her Cabbage Patch Kid. When we got home, I bought Maddy and bottle and ever since it’s been with her all the time. She’ll get monkey or Winnie the Pooh and hold the bottle up to the mouth while making eating noises. It’s so cute to watch.

The biggest growth since last time is Maddy’s speech. It’s like she learned some new words overnight. She knows UP, HELP (“EP” which we often confuse with “UP”), PLEASE (“PEAS”), DOG (“DOUGGI”), CAT (“MI MI” comes from ‘meow’ I think), BIRD (“BRRR”). I get the feeling that she is more verbal than physical and she loves to just sit there and “chat”. She definitely understand A LOT of what we say and I guess we’ll have to be more mindful of what we say from now on because she copies everything.

Potty time is still working well. Over the holidays Josh started asking her if she was “all done” while she was on the pot. There were a couple of time she’d shake her head saying “no”. He said that he left her and a few seconds later she’d be bearing down again!! At first I didn’t believe that she could know if she still had more to “go”, but it happens quite often now. We’re getting in the habit of letting her tell us if she is ready to come off the potty now. It works well that we let her play while on the potty. It keeps her occupied long enough for her to get the urge to go. She looks so funny sometimes sitting on the potty, one leg crossed over the other and with a book in her hands!

That’s about all for now. Lately Maddy and I have spent a lot of time indoors at home. To pass the time she loves to sit and watch old videos of herself on the computer. It’s so hard to believe that she has changed so much in what feels like such a short period of time. I remember those times like they were yesterday, except she is such a different girl now. She’s grown and changed so much! I love looking at the videos as much as she does and as hard as it is to get video of her now (she often will stop what she’s doing to come and grab the camera), I have to be sure to continue to get more videos. Pictures are nice but they don’t show nearly as much!! :)

Here's a short video of Maddy "then" and "now". What difference from the summer!