First off, thank you to everyone who left such nice comments when I wrote about my Dad’s passing. I’m not that active in the blogger world, but there are a handful of you who I truly do feel a connection with and enjoy reading about your lives, and every extra bit of support helps right now.
And onto happier things – Jane will be 16 months old next week, and it’s really the best time ever. When she was younger, up until around 10 months maybe (or whenever she started FINALLY napping regularly), I felt like I was always eager to get to the next stage. But now I pretty much like things how they are.
Sleep is going well, for awhile she was sleeping straight through the night (11 hours) but that meant waking up at 6 a.m., which I definitely didn’t like. For the past few weeks she’s been waking about 5 a.m. to nurse and then sleeping until past 7, which I much prefer.
Still taking two naps a day, don’t mind that either because it usually means mama gets to take a little morning nap too.
The best things right now are the affection and the sense of humor.
Every morning all three of us lay in bed slowly waking up, and when she’s done nursing she pops awake and gives each of us multiple kisses and is just the happiest girl in the world. And we didn’t teach her this, it’s like her own routine to make sure each of us gets a few kisses and hugs. She randomly kisses pictures of people and animals in books and also if another baby is crying she’ll go put her arms around them.
She makes me laugh so many times a day, with random “peek” games and putting things on her head, her enthusiasm in running towards the stroller when I say we’re going for a walk, or just making me smile every time we hear a bus go by on our busy street and she says “buh!”. Or walking down a street full of cars and she says pointing at a single one like it’s the most astounding thing “car!”. She will also totally burst out laughing if she hears us laughing.
She still talks her baby jibberish too, which is loud and forceful and sounds like some sort of foreign language. I finally got a video of it, where she’s standing on the toilet and waving her hands around like a dictator or crazy professor:
As far as other words, tonight I made a list of them, as the fabulous Twisted Susan suggested I do many months ago.
For more my own records than your entertainment, here is Jane’s current vocabulary off the top of my head, including animal noises:
Rar, meow meow, woof, ooo oo ahh (monkey, complete with chest pounding), quack quack, mama, dada, nana, oma, papa, bath, ball, car, bus, banana, good girl, no, all done, beep, hi, buh bye, baby, uh-oh, ohhh yeah!, oh jeez, shoe, up, down, on, off, kitty, nite nite, hot, thank you (sounds more like “tee tee”), bottle (“ba ba”), bug, hat, hair, eye, mmm num num, water, clock, tick tock, book, wee wee (as in the end of “this little piggy”), “weeee” as in going down the slide, and of course “wassat?” (what’s that?).
A few pics of my sweet baby, my big girl:
Her 15 (1/2) month checkup stats:
Love you Janey!!
xoxo
Mama
Sure, she’s adorable now. But one day you’re gonna be yelling and screaming at her.
Oh I don’t doubt it. Just trying to enjoy right now and not worry about the teenage years. Yikes.
You’ll already be tired of yelling and screaming by the time she’s a teenager.
I love the photos. Thanks for letting me vicariously have kids. I’m not interested in having any right now, but I do enjoy other folks’ kids! (The ones that you can play with and then return at the end of the day.)
The thought of having one’s father pass is unimaginably difficult to me, but I’m so glad that you have Jane in your life and that she makes you laugh so frequently. Keep on laughing! 🙂
Thanks Yair you are too sweet =). (And thanks again for letting me vicariously RV around the country!)
Seeing beautiful Jane brings back such sweet memories . . . my son is 16 years-old and still the light of my life. Although we’ve had challenges we still have an amazing relationship. I committed to not yelling or hitting and I’ve kept to the non-physical but have let my mouth fly at times. I’ve always come back to my values and apologized to my son. If I’m yelling I’m not using effective parenting skills.
I didn’t have my son until nearly 41 years of age so I had quite a bit of life experience behind me which helped me to parent differently than I would have in my younger years. I helped to raise my nieces and nephews so had some hands on experience. I took college courses in child development and manned a ‘warm line’ for parents. All of life’s experiences have helped me to be a better parent.
Decide how you want to parent and commit to parenting that way. It doesn’t mean you will be perfect, but when you fall short of your commitments apologize for your part. Don’t get sucked into negative talk about ‘the terrible two’ or ‘teenage angst’, it doesn’t have to be your experience, it hasn’t been mine.
Thank you for sharing the video of Jane. She’s very expressive and a joy to behold!