Sophia is 18 months!

No, I promise I won't be one of those "She's 29 months old" people. In fact I'm excited that for the next few months I can say "She's 1 and a half".

Life with Sophia is so much fun. John and I love watching this little human learn the world.
Life with Sophia is also tiring. There's a lot of things to teach and protect a little human from when they're learning the world.

Right now Sophia is learning to sing. It's so cute. The three songs she tries to sing mostly are "ABC's" "Twinkle Twinkle" and "My God is so Big," a song they sing in her Sunday School class.

She's also a bit of a daredevil. She loves to swim and often wants "down" while in the pool or ocean. Today we took her in the bay where the water is calm, and she had no problem walking away from me right into the water, all the way up to her chin and often past that. She is not happy to be in her baby float either, she wants full use of her arms to splash and move, and that ring around her just gets in the way!
I tried a Puddle Jumper on her, but she is still a little too small for that. She couldn't really move her arms at all and just stood in the living room crying.

Sophia is pretty good at walking, and can even do small stairs. She still needs a hand to hold on bigger steps. She's pretty good at walking in the sand and in the water. She still can't make the whole way to the ocean alone, it's too tiring. She can walk pretty fast, but still isn't full on running yet.

We had our first ER visit this quarter. Sophia was throwing a tantrum in the store, and apparently when I took her hand and tried to get her to stand up, her radius popped out of the socket. Unfortunately for her I didn't realize this for about 2 hours. Thankfully the hospital I work at has about a zero wait most of the time, so we were seen quickly. After triage, getting to a room, and then the nurse assessment, she started acting totally fine and using her arm again. The PA told us about Nursemaid's Elbow and how it probably reduced on it's own. Apparently it's pretty easy to reduce manually also. So two days later when it happened again at home (while trying to put on the blasted Puddle Jumper) I reduced it myself. And now we are very careful with Sophia's arms. :)

Did you catch above that she hurt her arm during a tantrum? Yeah, she's got a quick temper. Fortunately I read that is pretty common. She will scream and cry at the drop of a hat over the most random things. At home I just ignore it. In public it's not so fun. I know I'm supposed to keep my cool, but that's very hard. I try to play the distraction game without giving in to the fit. Tantrums are neither of our finest moments.

The amount of information this kid takes in everyday is amazing. Literally she learns a new word every day. She's quite the mockingbird. I decided to keep track for the last 2 months of all the words she uses or repeats easily, and the total as of June 1st is 190. And since my mom didn't believe me I'll list them all
:) And I didn't count twice for phrases that involve the same word in more than one.

Names: Mama, Papa, Mimi, MawMaw, Grammy, Hali, Jeff, Ben, Coco, Eby, Ernie (she says his name again now!), Sophie, Madison, Dora, Dale, Emma, Mike, Connor, George, Graycie, Tonya, Jesus.

Numbers/Colors: One, two, three, yellow. And she will count 123 on her own.

Commands: Please, thank you, you're welcome, up, down, come, hush, ok, yay, uh-oh, byebye, hi, hey, hello, no, ok, careful, night-night, off, clean up.

Foods: Cracker, cookie, apple, nana, milk, juice, water, chicken, bacon, baba, broccoli, yogurt, ice, egg, cheese, breakfast, bite, orange, coffee, mango, pepper, potato, candy.

Animals: Puppy, doggy, ruff-ruff, bird, owl, monkey, bunny, rabbit, froggy, zebra, bug, snail, lion, giraffe, turtle, kitty-cat.

Clothes: Socks, shoes, boots, diaper, paci, dress, hat, necklace, earrings, pants, glasses.

Body parts: Nose, toes, button, feet, booboo, hair, teeth, fingers, eye, ears, arms, legs, hands (and she can point to all of these).

General: Fire, poo-poo, Amen, pretty, hot, cold, what, book, raining, phone, baby, ball, bath, shower, outside, coming, sunshine, light, chair, medicine, mail, car, truck, airplane, carseat, seatbelt, flowers, bubbles, home, nice, window, door, pillow, slide, awesome, bucket, toys, strong, box, blanket, tv, bed.

Phrases: Come mama, I see you, I love you, I love (papa/mama etc), I know, what's this, Hi (baby/mama etc), no ok, bless you, touch it, have it, good girl, good boy, good morning, careful (Eby/baby etc), hi five, oh yeah, oh boy, big girl, I sorry, excuse me, happy day, I got it, where are you (Sophia/mama/papa etc), I got your phone.

So yes, she's a bit of a talker :) Lucky for me it doesn't really matter that I did not teach her baby sign language, because she caught on to talking pretty fast. We almost always know what she wants. Along with knowing more actual words, she also talks a fair amount of babble. It's cute :)

And finally, Sophia's favorite things list: being outside, sitting in adult chairs or kid sized replicas, candy, opening mail, pointing out airplanes, climbing around in the car, pushing the doll stroller and playing in the water.

Happy 1.5 years baby girl. Here's to many more.

Sophia's One year old Stats/Summary

I wanted to take the time to tally up all of the milestones Sophia has reached in the last year. We just had her one year visit to the pediatrician and everything went well. (We saw the other MD in the practice and we were much happier with her than the doctor we saw the first time. Whew!)

Weight: Birth- 8 lbs 6 oz (93rd percentile), 1yr 21 lbs 4 oz (79th percentile)
Height: Birth 21 inches (99th percentile), 1 yr 30.75 inches (95th percentile)
So she remains tall for now. In fact she's about on par with most 16-18 month olds.

Firsts: Sophie took her first steps! It was about a week before her birthday. The max she has gotten to is 3. However she's not walking yet. The interest just isn't quite there. She can stand on her own for quite a bit. But most times when we try to get her to walk, she just squats down and crawls.

(2 second video of first steps here)

Talking: All her vocabulary now includes Momma, Papa, bye-bye, no, hey, hi, alright, ok, uh-oh, whoa, oooooh and sometimes thank you. Everything is pretty clear except thank you. She is quite the mockingbird these days. Sometimes she repeats you exactly and sometimes she just gets the basic inflection.

Foods: We are almost done transitioning her to whole milk instead of formula. She has tolerated it fine other than some bowel changes. Her doctor said this is perfectly normal when changing her diet.
We're also working on weaning off bottles and solely to sippy cups. I think this will be easier once we're not using bottles to measure and mix formula then trying to remember to pour to a sippy. So far she eats an ounce or two less from the sippy than the bottle.
Breakfast is usually a combination of two of three things: whole milk organic yogurt, unsweetened applesauce or homemade cinnamon raisin oatmeal. Some staples in her diet are cooked chicken (she especially loves rotisserie), mandarin oranges, fruit cups and black beans. She really loves roasted or baked turkey too. She continues to love broccoli and not like peas very much. She loves to chomp apple cores and even corn cobs! The list of foods she has tried and likes are too many to list now. Generally she eats whatever we eat for dinner, supplemented by some of her "staple" foods if she doesn't each much of ours. She had a few bites of pumpkin pie over Thanksgiving and really loved it. She actually smiled! She doesn't do that very often at all over food.

Speaking of chomping: teeth. She still has the same 7 she had last time I updated, over 3 months ago. I know there are molars and lateral incisors needing to come through! Come on already!

Sleep: Sophia's sleep was disturbed for about a month. On the worst nights she was waking up 3-4 times. Some nights were very hard. She had various things going on: transitioning to whole milk, a short cold, teething? and night terrors. Sometimes her night terrors are really bad. It's so pitiful because she cries uncontrollably until we can finally get her woken up enough to realize she's being comforted. We tried just rocking, then pain meds, then finally feeding. Which one did the trick was different every night. Finally the last few days I felt like it was becoming a habit and she was forgetting how to self soothe, so I would only comfort her a few minutes and then put her back in bed, rather than rocking her to sleep or giving a bottle. She had to CIO a couple times, but it was only for about 20 minutes max. Last night she slept through her full 12 hours!

Vaccines: until now we hadn't given Sophia any vaccines. I'd made a plan to start when she turned one. I just felt (and of course did research) that her little body didn't need to be pumped up with all those medications until she was more developed. I'm still going to follow Dr. Sears recommendation of only having 2 vaccines at a time. I knew I wanted to start with TDaP and either HIB or PCV. The doctor recommended PCV over HIB because they still see pneumococcal infections but very rarely HIB infections. I want to delay until 2 or possibly not at all for MMR. That one is so controversial and the conflicting data scares me. Heck even the handouts on the vaccines she did get, which are put out by the CDC, were pretty ominous in their side effects and occurrence rates. I'm not sure we'll do Polio either since that is eradicated in the whole Western hemisphere. And we won't do Hep B until she has a much greater chance of coming in blood contact with an infected person, like in contact sports. In six weeks we'll go back and start the HIB series.
We were both very grateful that the doctor did not demean or chastise us for our decisions on vaccines. She was very friendly and acted like it was not a problem at all. The only "flack" we got at all was that the medical assistant who checked us in wanted to know if we wanted any vaccines and if so which ones was she do for. I explained that we were just starting vaccines that day. And she said "Ok, so do you have your own shot card?". I explained we didn't because she hadn't had any vaccines yet. She asked again which vaccines did I want and did I know she was like "Way behind?" I explained I wanted to start and wanted DTaP and either HIB or PCV. She said "Do you want to talk to the doctor to decide which one?" which I appreciated and did. She was very nice about it and I know it all just came from our decisions being outside the norm of what they do every day. So all in all it went well.

Play: Although we have continued to try different toys with Sophia, she still prefers household objects the most. Her favorites are laptops, remotes, cell phones, dishes in the dishwasher, toilets, trash cans, dog toys and keys. She also likes acrylic straws, things in the pantry, paper, laundry, laundry baskets, pens, earrings, rings, nail clippers, plants, dirt, balls and pushing dining room chairs around. She also likes board books, sometimes for reading but mostly for chewing. She has an awesome play table, a cool pink motorcycle walker, a ball popper, a rock-a-stack, a musical cube and a xylophone. She doesn't play with any of them for more than 2 minutes.

Overall, she is developing perfectly and right on track. We are so pleased with and proud of our baby girl. We just love her to pieces!

Here are some photos from her birthday shoot credit to Lauren Seymore of Seemore Photography

Sophia is 9 months!

Sweet Sophia,

    You're getting to be more like a toddler than a tiny baby. Although, I still think you're a baby and think that "baby" covers up to age 2. I don't want you to feel pressured to grow up too fast, and I don't want to coddle you so much that you grow up too slow. For instance, I still hold your bottle. You can hold it, but you like to shake and slosh it around and spill milk everywhere. So it's somewhat convenience on my part too. But, I'd like to think if you were still breastfed I'd be holding your "bottle" for you :)

    Oh but in almost every single other area you are Ms. Independent. I wondered if you might be a bit headstrong, being a first born and all. But, I'm told this is just part of normal development. You want to stand even though you can't, you want to feed yourself even though only 10% of your food makes it in your mouth, you want to grab and swipe and hold everything you get near, especially if it's something you shouldn't. I'm not even sure why you have your own toys. You rarely want them. You crawl over to the dog's toy basket 90% of the time. Bottles of all kinds, pens, sunglasses, straws, phones, jewelry and electrical cords are just a few of the things you're keen on. Oh and shoes, you love to chew those, yuck.

    You've said several "words" but I think we can say your first real one is "uh oh". It's the only one you use appropriately (sometimes). I'm not sure why you picked that one. It's cute though! You are mimicking words a lot now. You've tried to say "no no, mama, night night" and today you added "papa". Your dad was so excited!

    We went to your new pediatrician for your well check. You're no longer off the charts for height. You're 28.75 inches and 20.25 pounds. That puts you around 90th percentile for height and 80th percentile for weight. Still a big girl :) Tonight I tried to put a 12 month sleeper on your (open foot style) but it was too short. I got it snapped but you were so cranky in it I changed you back to your onesie.
You now have a total of 7 teeth! Four on top and three on bottom. You also finally started hands and knees crawling, although you only go a few feet at a time. Your pediatrician said we need to cut back your formula and increase your solids. We're working on that. You don't eat very much in the way of solids so I'm not sure we'll completely follow her advice. She was nice but we still miss your old pedi a lot :(

   You had your first fever. You ended up being feverish for a little over 24 hours. The nurse practitioner checked you and said it was likely just something viral. It was really worrisome. You woke up in the middle of the night (which is fairly unusual) and dad checked on your, re-tucked you in and you went back to sleep for about two hours. You woke up crying again and I checked on you. I decided to pick you up to comfort you and I was very taken aback. You were burning up! I called for your dad and the thermometer. Your temp was 100.4, but you felt very hot. You got a tepid bath, sips of water, and Tylenol. But you wouldn't go back to sleep unless I was holding you. So you slept on my chest on the couch for a couple hours. You were so pitiful and it heart mine and papa's hearts so much. And exhausted us all! It was as if the world stopped for a day and we were consumed with you. Mama is also not used to sleep deprivation anymore since you're such a good sleeper. It was hard on us all.

Your 9th month also included a trip to Disney World! It was just for about 8 hours but we had fun. You did really well and took two naps! It was a busy week with family so I think you were pretty tired. Now I know you really can sleep anywhere if you're tired enough. You actually fell asleep in my arms on the Haunted Mansion ride and then slept through walking, talking and two more rides.

Disney day was also your papa's birthday. That night we went out for Hibachi and you ate a decent amount of vegetables and noodles/rice. But- your papa was holding you when they sang to him and brought him a cupcake. He had a bite, then fed me a bite. Usually you explore new foods before eating them. But at lightning speed and in one fluid motion you grabbed a handful of cake and stuffed it in your mouth. We were all very surprised and everyone had a good laugh. I'm telling you, you only want the stuff you aren't supposed to have!

Mama and papa love you so much pretty baby! We couldn't have known how much joy you'd bring.

On our car ride to Tampa. You thought throwing paper balls was hilarious!

At a baseball game

"No pictures please"

Pool time!

Teeth!

Eating a leaf on vacation in Orlando

With your papa and grandpa

Great Grandma Joan

Aunt Tiffany and Aunt Hali the night before Disney

Disney day!

Giving kisses!

With your papa having fun!

With the aunts!

Your Aunt Hali ADORES you!

And so does your papa. It makes my heart overflow.

You're also enamored with your Uncle Jeff

And Grammy Melanie wants to bite you!

And you're the light of MeMe and MawMaw's lives!

Sophia is 8 months!

Sophie baby!

Your momma suuuuure does love you! You're getting bigger every day, right before my eyes. People will comment how much you've grown, and it's then that I remember to stop and think back to how you've changed so much from the newborn days. You still fit in my arms in the glider, but now instead of a squirmy bundle you're an independent baby.

When I do rock you, your feet and legs have to squish and bend to fit in the chair with me :(

You now have 5 teeth. Your top "lateral incisors" aka canines, and three on the bottom middle. I'm sure you'll add the matching 4th soon for a total of 6.

In the last month, you've really started to eat solids well. Before I was basically coaxing you into it. Now, you (mostly) eat around 1/8 to 1/4 a cup per meal and open your mouth when the spoon comes your way.

For breakfast you're now having a bottle, yogurt and applesauce. Lunch is broccoli and carrots. Dinner is usually something from our plates plus some pureed veggies. Today I gave you the mesh teether with a banana in it. You chewed it some then enjoyed banging it on your tray. Your favorite "baby" foods are broccoli and cinnamon applesauce. So far you've had sweet potatoes, avocado, broccoli, peas, carrots, applesauce, yogurt, saltines, bananas, green beans, and a host of other bites off our plates. I generally try to give you some of what we're eating at dinnertime. So you've also tried zucchini, black beans, grits, mushrooms, pizza crust, corn, baked potato, rice, roast and chicken.

I was sitting on the floor with you eating a spoonful of peanut butter, and without thinking gave you the spoon to lick. I was terrified for a moment once I realized I'd given you the "most likely to give your kid allergies or anaphylactic shock" food. Thankfully you had no adverse effects. I don't think you are going to have any food allergies.

You are very close to crawling. I both want you to and don't. I want you to because it will make you happy. I can tell you really want to take off. For now you're belly/army crawling. I don't want you to because it means you'll be into everything, which will make more work for mommy. It will also mean you're getting bigger! I want you to grow, but maybe more slowly? :) I know I will miss the baby days even as I enjoy all the ones to come.

You are in 9 month clothes, and a few 12 month. Your MeMe bought you some onesies (for sleeping and playing) and I had her get 18 month in those because you are so long! Your foot is between a size 2 and 3 depending on the style and brand. But putting shoes and socks on you is pretty futile. You kick off the shoes and pull off the socks. So you're barefoot 99.9% of the time.

You babble a lot. Mamamama, dadadada, gagaga, heh, heee and lots of other sounds. You love to clap your hands. I've started signing to you at meal times and I hope you'll catch on. I'm also loosely trying to teach you to wave.

Some of your favorite things are patty cake, being tossed in the air, riding on papa's shoulders and playing in the dogs water bowls.

You have been taking 3 naps a day but I'm now experimenting with switching to 2 longer ones. I think this will work out better. You still get 4 8oz bottles a day and solids 3 times a day.

We see a new pediatrician September 3rd and I'll have your official height and weight. Last time I checked you were almost 18.5 pounds and I'm guessing you're close to 30 inches.

Your old pediatrician quit practicing for now :( We were really sad about that. I hope we'll like the new one just as much.

Photos from 6-8 months

Sooooo close to crawling!

Check out her expression. lol

Diva baby.

Vampire teeth

This is an old dress of mine she's wearing

What a little sweetheart

Just chillin in front of the boob tube. She looks so big!

4th of July

Senorita Sophia

Lovin the kiddie pool

And the big pool

Keepin it real. It's not ALL smiles :)