Fifteen Months

It's about time for another monthly update, so here you go.

Height: I'll measure later.

Weight: I'll measure that later, too.

Speech: I wrote down most of them in the last post, but there are a few amendments. Outside is now "ow-sai" and she also says "key" and "bubble" (buh-buh). I think in the last couple of days she has also learned "walk" (wah), but that may just be her copying my noises. She's really good at that. I think we're also getting sentences out of her, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around that. Ellie has been saying, "eye-na beebee" for a couple of weeks now. There was a while when we would ask, "who's the baby?" and get the above response from her. Last week my aunt Carolyn watched Eliana for an afternoon and heard a lot of, "eye-na go ow-sai" while Ellie pointed at the door. Then when told Eliana we were going for a walk with Aunt Carolyn she said, "eye-na go wah." This was repeated a few times so I'm certain it meant something to her. I just hope it meant what it sounded like to me.

Teeth: Fourteen and one or two more coming soon. She's getting her canines. The amount of continuous slobber she's got running down her chin is a good indicator that the next two canines will be here any day.

Motor: Ellie can negotiate the stairs on her own, but it still makes us nervous. At one point she learned to turn around and crawl down the stairs. She won't do that any more. Now she sits on the steps and scoots until her little bum falls down onto the next step. That, however, is not her favorite method. She really prefers to hold a hand and walk down like the big people do. The very best way is to have someone a few steps down to catch her when she lets herself fall forward. She will also avoid crawling upstairs if possible. Ellie likes to hold on to the wall with one hand and use it to balance herself while she hoists her leg up to stand on the step. Meals taste better is she has her own fork to stab the food with. Drawing is becoming more popular, as is throwing things to create a mess.

Social: Other children are fascinating to Eliana. She will say hi to them and walk over to get a better look at them. She hasn't figured out that they don't appreciate it when she takes the binky out of their mouth to see what tastes so good. I'm glad she doesn't like binkies or I would worry she might put them in her own mouth. Sitting on laps is another fun thing. She has enjoyed that much over the past several months. Ellie is also becoming more daring with it. Most adults don't mind. She just needs to learn it's not appropriate to sit in the lap of someone smaller than yourself (examples: a 13 month old girl at church and Eliana's 11 week old cousin). I wanted to get a picture, but even more I didn't want innocent children crushed.

Other tidbits: Wearing shoes is a favorite activity. It doesn't matter who they belong to, she thinks she should wear them. The picture shows her in Daddy's size 13 sandals.

Eliana is a stomach sleeper all the way. It makes for interesting sleeping positions. The picture below...well, we're not sure how she managed to low ride her jammies.

If she doesn't sleep on her tummy she likes to at least stick her feet through the bars of her crib. I don't know why, but I almost always find her with one or both feet through the slats.

Halloween was a bit more fun for her this year (I think). We didn't trick or treat, but we did take her to my parents' place before going to celebrate the birthday of Ellie's aunt Amber. Both Eric and I were blonde when we were little. We don't know when Eliana's hair is going to go dark, so we knew we needed to do Cinderella in the year we knew she'd be blonde.

The piano is a fun toy. Ellie has moved on from simply banging the keys to playing one note at a time (mostly). I'll start working with her after she turns 3 and see if playing the piano is something she wants to learn.

A new part of the morning routine has been adopted. When I'm just too tired (often) I get her out of the crib and bring her onto our bed. She crawls around on us for a couple of minutes before climbing down. Ellie then wanders back into her room and gets into the box of diapers. She fishes one out then brings it back into our bedroom. As soon as she gets to the bed she slaps the diaper down and says "bum!" before crawling up to be changed. It cracks me up every time.

The last video is of her rocking out in her daddy's old rocking chair. We were at Eric's brother's wedding reception that was held in his mom's backyard, hence the fancy dress.

I love this little girl so much!