Coral at almost 16 months
I love this little person. She’s so funny. It’s a fun age, even when she wants to have her way more and more. Now that she’s been mobile for a while, but she still has giant baby cheeks, she feels more and more like a toy human and it’s so cute. When she tries to say words with her baby way, I just want to eat her up, yum! Even just the way she says the letter “Q”: “kiiiieeeeeeeeuuuwwww?” gives me cavities.
I swear she must have around 70 words now. The doctor was even impressed at her 15-month checkup. I guess I could go back through this blog and count but whatever, it’s impressive to me. Here are her latest words:
- “Pee-puhw”=People
- “Co”=Coat
- “Naaayww”=Nail
- Tree (pretty close to the real thing)
- Wall
- “Tihrr-tuwww”=Turtle
- “Cahw”=Car, which makes it hard to tell apart from “cow”
- “Sheeeeeeeuwww”=Seal
- “AhhHHHHHHHHHhhhhhHH, shi-en”=Siren (she makes the sound of the siren along with the word)
- “Baa”=sheep
- “Ah-fohhhh”=Aquaphor, the ointment we use on her
- Boo!
- “Sheeeee-shaaawwww”=Seesaw
- “Ahn-joooooo”=Orange Juice
- “Ahhhhm”=Open, and I know you think I’m making things up but that’s what she says when she wants me to open the closet door, after I told her to say “open”
- “E-eee”=Ernie, from Sesame Street
- “Heeeahhgo”=Here ya go, too cute!
- “Nai-naiii”=night-night, which can be used at night or any sleepy time
She learned where her knees, elbows, and neck are, and can recognize most of the animals on the See and Say toy. If I say “let’s go to the window and see if Daddy’s home/see if the moon is out/watch the garbage man” she runs to the window to look, so she must understand something in that phrasing.
During my whole sickness thing a couple weeks ago, I didn’t pump much. I didn’t have the energy and I was taking so much stuff that even though it was all “safe for nursing,” I dumped it as a precaution. As a consequence, we just nurse in the mornings and sometimes I pump at night, but half the time I skip it. I can tell–we’ll be weaned definitely before two if not by 18 months. I was hoping to make it to 18 months but if we were to stop/I didn’t produce any more by 17 months, I suppose I could accept it. I miss it already, though. Such a cuddly, quiet time.
We’ve been cloth diapering more now that we have the washer, and most of the weekend diapers are either cloth or the gDiaper hybrid. Weeknights, we mostly use cloth, too, since it leaks less than the disposables. As a result, we’re only having to order a case of disposables every other month and are averaging 3-4 a day, which really is all at daycare. I feel pretty good about that. The more exciting thing (no kidding, Deb) is that Coral has really begun saying “poo-poo” more often before she really does poop. It’s nice to have a heads-up (especially since she can poo up to 4 times a day)! And I think it means that toilet training will be easy. I mean, if she’s already telling us at 16 months, maybe we can try to potty train before 2 years. That would be great news if we enroll her in preschool. That’s a whole ‘nuther story I don’t feel like getting into. Nothing’s secret; I’m just too tired.
Coral’s been sleeping better lately. Maybe a month ago when I reported her sleep average was low, she was going through some developmental step or bad teething that wrecked her sleep. Lately, she’s been averaging 12 hours a day which for her is good. Maybe we’re seeing precursors of her moving to one nap a day, too. Today she napped almost 2 hours in the morning and skipped her afternoon nap. Then at night she went to bed with no struggle whatsoever. Actually, the past month or more, we’ve just set her in the crib and said “night-night” or “bye bye” and after talking to herself and fussing for a while, she will go to sleep on her own. It’s been nice! I hope she keeps it up, though I know that as soon as I publish this she’ll have some kind of sleep disturbance. And then she’s been sleeping till 6am or later, which is great. The only notable exception was this morning, when she was up at 5am because her diaper leaked and her whole onesie was wet, so she must have been unhappy.
Not too much else is different from a few weeks ago. Just that every few days I notice another behavior that seems more grown up, whether it’s communication or playing games or organizing toys or whatever. Such a neat period of discovery for her and for the parents. 
