15 months and going...

It's been quite a while since I posted something. The summer was brutally hot and humid and we spent a lot of our days in the park or avoiding outside, depending on how the weather was.

We just returned from a week in Mexico visiting Abuelos y familia. It took her about 4 days to really get comfortable with the family since she hadn't seen them since March and, surprisingly, warmed up to Tio David pretty quickly. I guess since he was willing to hold her hands up and down the stairs (her favorite activity after watching Dora), he won that spot in her heart :) All considered, she was pretty good on the planes there with me and then on the way back with both of us.

I was recently talking with a friend of mine who has an 8 month old about what foods I was giving at that time. It made me realize I forgot and how quickly these little ones change. So I'm going to write down what we do now, for future reference:

She's on one nap a day and is usually from 11/12pm for 1-2 hours. She went to sleep at 10.30am on Tuesday (after the extra-long day on Monday getting home with a serious delay at Houston) and didn't get up until 2.30pm. Very unusual but expected. She's usually desperate for sleep by about 6.30/7pm, mostly since she's walking EVERYWHERE and loves going up and down stairs. While in Mexico I didn't force her to go to sleep at her usual time, in case she wanted to stay up to play with her cousins. Nope, she's like a clock... Was ready for bed at about 7pm CST.

She has gotten much pickier about her food and likes more variety in her diet, and more sweets. She's crazy about pizzelle that my mom makes. Since the past few weeks she's been super-hungry, I was feeding her more since she's just finished a growth spurt. But it's mostly like this:

Get up for breakfast. Cereal with milk, toast, eggs (with cheese usually)
Go to the park, snack (like "healthy" cookies or crackers like Hot Kid Organic Baby Mum-Mum Original Rice Rusks) on the way back or substantial snack (more like lunch #1) like grapes, peaches, grape tomatoes, blueberries once we're home.
Nap
Lunch #2. Usually largest meal of the day includes some kind of meat, veg or fruit and pasta or rice. Cheese, sometimes. Sometimes it's just cheese, and sometimes it's just an endless array of fruit. Other days it's more balanced. I've learned to go with it and fight her less. Much easier on us both.
Park.
Snack on way home
Dinner. Like lunch but smaller, unless she's really hungry that day.
Bath, Dora, book, bottle, bed.

My mother-in-law insisted that I give her 3 bottles a day, maybe 4. She said the baby needs it. I said I don't think so and that eating real food is more filling. I gave it a try mid-week while in Mexico, to be polite while we were there, but she was waking up early in the morning and crying out more at night. I'm really really not sure why the change but we fed her a bottle when she did get up at 4am. That didn't help her go back to sleep right away, but she would finish it. I'm doubtful it was waking up because she was hungry but I went back to our normal routine when we came home just the same. I think it was more anxiety that she was waking up with. Her cries were more like scared/stressed than hungry.

While teething, as I've mentioned before, she's been a blueberry-a-holic. This week, since her 4th molar finally broke through. She's less obsessed with frozen blueberries. She wouldn't eat a frozen one since Monday when it broke through. Yesterday I got her to have some but only after I defrosted them a little.

This is good news as although it means frozen blueberries might be off the go-to list for a while, at least she's been less cranky from the teething. Phew!

So now she has 12 teeth: four top/front, four bottom/front, four molars. I don't know when the others are supposed to come in but I don't care. She's happy, I'm happy.

She's also started to be more shy around strangers. And is less willing to go in the park without me if other kids are around. Just the past 2 weeks, around when she turned 15 months. Something clicked in her head and something changed. I'm assuming this is a new change that is part of the growing cycle. It's curious. she's also having temper tantrums. They're not terrible and not very often, but they're there and they are definite. I ignore her for the most part -- just make sure she doesn't smack her head on the floor or ground as she's doing it. And then when it's done, I go "all done?" And she gets up and we move on.

I've wanted to get her into more classes, the Gymboree ones are great and the equipment is really super. But they're very, very expensive. So, we go to the public park. Not the nice, private one with the grass -- the city ones with the rubber "floors" and sprinklers and slides and stairs and swings. They do the trick. It gets a bit boring but at least we have 2 to choose from that are within 10-15 blocks of the apartment.