Right now, my dear Leah, you weigh 21 pounds and are 31 inches tall. You are wearing 12 month clothes, size 3-4 shoes, and size 3 diapers. I felt like you were on the small side when we went to your one year appointment, but it turns out that you are still in the 97th percentile for height and in the 60's for weight. Now that you're officially a toddler, I've moved you to the rocking chair with your quilt as the new "grown up" backdrop for your monthly pictures.
You were able to wear your Easter dress (which was unexpectedly gifted to us by one of my parents' neighbors) the next Sunday. You cried or gave me grimaces the whole time I tried to take pictures of you in your dress, so here are the best ones for the scrapbook.
This month you have continued to work on talking. The words that you use are dada, mama, and buh buh (bye bye). I was trying to convince your daddy one evening that you knew who he was because he didn't believe me. I said, "Where's Dada?" and you turned around, smiled, and looked at him. Then I said, "Where's Mama?" and you looked at me. He still didn't believe that you ACTUALLY knew, so I asked again and this time you turned around and POINTED right at him and said, "Dada!" Haha, it was hilarious! You say "Dada" a lot more often then "Mama," but when you are sad you will usually call out to me. Whenever we are leaving or someone is leaving, we practice "bye, bye." You hand clap with one hand while saying, "buh, buh." I don't think you really understand it quite yet, but you are now willing to copy us.
You've also started making some pretty funny sounds with your mouth. You learned to click your tongue in the car and you make an "Indian" sound by putting the back of your hand over your mouth and flapping it. Another sound you make (though not quite as pleasant) is this high pitched squeal/scream when you're excited. I've been trying to break you of the habit by gently cupping my hand over your mouth when I'm within close range of you and you start doing the "Indian" sound and smile.
You've started with more motions this month as well besides moving your hand for bye bye. You now clap on demand, give high fives, point at EVERYTHING with your hands, and shake your head no. When you want something, want to go a certain direction, or if you're just curious you have started to point. We sometimes play a game where you point at lots of different things while I name everything. A few weeks ago, we were sitting down for dinner and you threw some of your food on the ground. I looked at you, shook my head, and said, "No Leah." I hadn't even noticed that you had copied me, but your daddy did and got you to shake your head again copying him that time. Now whenever we tell you, "No." You shake your head and smile at us. Apparently, we still need to work on conveying the seriousness of "No." When we turn on music, you have started to dance some. You have gotten your moves from your daddy and I because all you do at this point is move back and forth on your feet and shake your head. We wish we still had our Latin dancing Puerto Rican neighbors to teach you how to dance!
Your favorite games to play right now are, "I'm Gonna Get You!" and "Peek-A-Boo!" We have a circle that you like to run around and chase your daddy or vice versa in the evenings after he gets home from work. He runs around saying, "I'm gonna get you!" and you squeal and keep on running from him. One night you were chasing him around and he stopped playing. You grabbed him to catch him, but then you just kept on running around the circle. Haha! With Peek-a-Boo, you have started putting your purple blanket over your head and walking around like a little purple ghost. We say, "Where's Leah??" and you pull down the blanket and look at us with a big smile. We know when you want to play when we see you walking around blindly with the blanket over your head. You've run into quite a few walls and corners this way!
Now that the weather is nicer, we've been walking to the community playground a couple times a day. You've gotten into a little routine once we're there if no one else is at the playground. When we get there, you run right over to the baby swings and point at the first one. I push you in the swing for a while and as soon as you get down, you point to the second baby swing and I push you in that one for a little while. After the swings, you go over to the slides and stand at the bottom until I sit you at the top to go down them. If there are other kids, you watch and copy them and will climb up the stairs and go to the slides on your own. I have to be careful and watch you closely because you don't always sit down before you try to go down the slides! You also like to "drive" by spinning a steering wheel at the top of the slide area. It's so much fun to watch you learn and play!
As far as moving, you are really getting faster and I think I can now say that you are actually running! You are still pretty clumsy and take quite a few spills, but you are getting more steady on your feet each day. During church, you have a tendency to run up the aisles during sacrament meeting when your daddy is traveling. I'm worried that one of these days you will make it to the pulpit. This last Sunday, your daddy and I were able to corral you during sacrament meeting between us by playing games and giving you snacks. It makes for a long hour and 15 minutes! You crawl up the stairs pretty quickly and now you will go down on your belly without me getting you started. You still do not start going down if your are at the top of the stairs though. You still aren't really climbing all that much and you have yet to climb onto the couch or a chair, but you are very interested to see what I am always doing at the stove.
You have three new teeth on their way in right now with your bottom two solidly in. Your top right tooth and the one next to it are slightly out and your other front tooth is barely poking out. When you first started getting your top teeth, you were grinding them together making noises that drove your mommy CRAZY! Fortunately, you have stopped that for the most part. Your new teeth have made it easier to chew on things and also to keep your food in your mouth.
As far as eating, you are a champ. You will try basically anything we put on your plate or into your mouth. Your favorite foods right now are noodles, scrambled eggs, broccoli, peanut butter, blueberries... and of course anything with chocolate! Unfortunately right now when you are finished, you have started picking up your plate and dumping it out to let us know you are done, so we're working on correcting that. We still have a bunch of Sixlets left over from Easter. When your daddy gets home from work each day, he will open up a little packet with eight little spherical candies and pop them out of the wrapper one at a time. You feed the first one to your self, the next one to your daddy, and then you alternate between the two of you. We are very surprised at how naturally good you are at sharing right now!
I finally got around to installing room darkening curtain up in your room. The darker room has increased both your morning and afternoon naps by about 15 minutes each and you sleep in a little extra in the mornings as well! Your schedule right now if we don't have any conflicts is that you wake up around 7am, nap from 10-12 and 3-5. You are usually in bed by around 8pm. You have gotten really good at getting yourself to sleep and waking up without crying. You even will play in your crib for a little while now before I come to get you out. You have a glowing seahorse that you love to play with while you wait. I can tell that you are ready to get out when you start throwing out all of your stuffed animals. I am still nursing you before nap times and bedtime, but you are usually still awake whenever I lay you down in the crib. You are pretty scheduled and if we don't make it home in time for your nap time, you still find ways to get your nap in...
You are still awesome in your car seat anytime we drive somewhere. As long as we are moving, you are content. The only problem that we have run into is that you fall asleep pretty easily in the car. Once we get home and it is nap time, you think that you have already napped even if it was only 10 or 15 minutes and end up skipping your nap. You used to be really good in the grocery cart. You would just look around at everyone and take everything in. Now, you want to be out of the cart and touching everything. It makes shopping trips much more... interesting. When we went shopping this last Saturday, you pointed at one of the strawberry applesauce pouches while we were in line at check out. Your daddy caved and went ahead and bought it for you. You got a really big smile on your face as soon as he opened it for you. The whole way home in the car, you were drinking your applesauce and saying, "Dada dada dada." It was very cute!
You have definitely started getting into more stuff. I have to be really careful to keep the bathroom doors closed and the toilet lids down or we end up with the toilet paper unrolled and objects in the toilet water. One of your favorite drawers to empty out right now is the one below the oven/stove and it is usually while I am cooking. You pull out all of my cookie cooling racks with LOUD clangs and then climb inside the drawer. You always look very pleased with yourself after you do it. Sometimes, if I am lucky, you put the cookie cooling racks back.. but not usually. You also like to dump out all of the food bins in your play kitchen. Another favorite place of yours is the fridge. Whenever I open the refrigerator, you always run over to get inside. If I forget to close the door immediately, you quickly find your way inside. One time, you pulled out and cracked every single one of our decorated hard boiled eggs from Easter.
You LOVE playing in the dirt or sand. I was doing a little prepping of our garden at my parents' house and when I went to throw the weeds out, you climbed in the planter box and had yourself covered in dirt within seconds! You have done this now on TWO different occasions! Another time, we were over at a friend's house in the neighborhood and you crawled into their sandbox and started playing while I was over there talking. You were perfectly content for over 45 minutes without a SINGLE interruption from me. I think we're going to need to have daddy build you a sandbox!
You are growing so quickly and learning so many new things. I can't wait to see what you'll be doing this next month! I love you my dear, sweet Leah!
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