18 months!

Can you believe that Roo* is 18 months old? I am having difficulty with it, and I have the living breathing truth in front of me.

At 18 months she is a hilarious, active, talkative little person. She makes us laugh so much, and she’s super cute. She’s tall for her age and quite slim, with short hair because it hasn’t grown much yet. At this rate she won’t have her first haircut until she’s three. She wears mostly size two, but some things are too short on her.

Eating is generally good. She will try stuff if in a good mood, but doesn’t like some textures. Can feed herself with a spoon, but looses interest quickly. Her diet involves probably too much fruit and bread, but has got a reasonable amount of meat and vegetables.

Her favourite food is sushi (salmon and avocado). She also loves banana, hot cross buns, and fish. Really enjoys water, and doesn’t know that juice exists yet 😉.

She’s still dairyfree, but as we haven’t heard the stridor in a couple of months, we are about to try introducing dairy. Fingers crossed, she has grown out of her intolerance. It would be nice to be able to offer her yoghurt and cheese.

Her first set of molars have just all come through. Those teeth are huge! Poor girl was quite grumpy for a bit. Otherwise her health had been good and the frequency of colds had slowed down now she’s been at childcare for 6 months.

Sleeping is pretty fantastic to be honest. She goes into her cot at 7pm and wakes up about 6am. She only wakes if something is wrong, like she’s sick or (as it has been recently) too hot.

Her naps have been a pretty consistent 2 hours in the afternoon for about 5 months now, but I think she’s starting to need less sleep. A nap of only 80 minutes is becoming increasingly common. She wakes up happy and plays in her cot for a while, so we know she’s had enough sleep.

The big sleep transition coming up is removing the side of her cot. I am not looking forward to it, but she’s starting to try and climb out. Someday soon she will be successful, and we want to remove the temptation before then. Any tips on how to manage this would be greatly appreciated.

Physically she’s getting stronger and more confident every day. She actually runs fast now. I have to run to catch up with her (which is whenever she gets her feet on the ground). She can climb into her car seat from outside the car, go down a slide by herself (and then climb back up it), and use one of those plastic push tricycle things.

Roo walks up and down stairs standing upright if there is something to hold on to. She can hold a pen or a paint brush and do scribbly drawings. She puts duplo together and makes vehicles and towers. She does pretend play with us and her soft toys. This morning she had a cup and was pretending to drink coffee!

She loves books and being read to. Her favourites change often, but when she likes a book she wants it all the time. She loves being sung to, and tries to sing along. She also loves music and dancing and has some hilarious moves.

Her speaking is wonderful. Roo knows and uses appropriately 100+ words (that we understand, also uses lots of words that we can’t work out what they are). She puts together 2 and 3 word sentences. We’re so happy to be able to talk to her about what she wants and needs. However, we have to be very careful of language now as she repeats everything we say!

She’s really interested in everything in the sky, including birds, planes, helicopters, flags, and the moon. We’re nearby a flight path, and next to the hospital (where the rescue helicopter goes to), so she sees a lot of these.

Top activities include swimming, seeing her Nan (my mother), going to childcare, patting animals, and playgrounds.

Things that we are working on currently include, using please and thank you, tidying up, basic counting (1-5), and words for emotions.

She’s such a delightful little girl in so many ways. Having Roo is the best decision we have ever made.

*For new readers Roo is just her blog name, we haven’t named our daughter after a character in winnie the pooh.