Growing Up

Jessica is now 16 months old. Her 15-month check-up put her at 97th percentile (above all the lines on the growth chart) for height at 33" long and weight at 28 pounds. I'm glad she's lengthening out, and she can walk--we can only carry her so far.

It's a good baby life Jessica leads. Here's a look at what she does in between the big events in life. We're very impatient to teach her everything and for her to speak, draw, climb, obey, and play with us. But it amazes me how many small things there are to teach.

Dave was craving ice cream one night, and bought Blue Bell mini ice cream sandwiches. J ate half of one after dinner for four days straight. Did you know you have to teach a child to lick their fingers?

Before Easter I made sugar cookies with Jessica. I thought she would enjoy punching them out, but she just wanted to eat dough. She couldn't lick much cookie dough off the beater either. I should have taught her to suck and bite the beater. So much to learn.

Jessica loves to chew on her rubber baby toothbrush ("Don't throw your toothbrush in the trash" After 6 instructions, she can put it back on the bathroom counter.) She puts our shoes on her hands, and now, on her feet, by herself. She unloads the desk drawer; puts my hair bands on her wrists like bracelets ("No, hairbrushes are for your head; bottlebrushes are for...cleaning stuffed animals' ears"). She rearranges the pantry onto the floor, spreads toys around the house; hangs on my arm for attention ("Say 'mommy', don't pinch me.") when I'm trying to work on my computer; plays the piano; hugs, straddles, hits, pets, laughs at the cat and sticks her fingers in his ears; pulls blankets from her crib; pulls her diaper bag contents into her crib; unzips my piano teacher pencil bag and opens the markers; asks for help to get "ut! uh! uh!" (up) on everything; opens my purse to play with my cards; is underfoot while I do my make-up, make dinner, and fold laundry;

and treats lots of things like cell phones and jabbers away on them. She actually called Dave's mom twice in a row one day and talked to her, right under my nose. Another day she called my mom's cell phone, and when it didn't pick up, called her house phone, to talk with that Grandma for a while. (They are both on speed dial.)

She's used my phone to take pictures. (This photo, I believe, was on the drive to the Orlando temple one day.)

When Dave left for his week-long rafting trip, I was worried about having enough to do to keep her sane. Dave takes over after work and plays with her while I make dinner, teach lessons, or just get some alone time.

Every day we left the house; but when we were stuck at home, we painted her toenails for the first time (for which she was very serious and still): 

played with glow-in-the-dark bracelets:

and drew on the sidewalk with chalk and the windows with window markers.

Gratefully, she is finally ignoring the CDs & DVDs, doesn't empty trash much, and usually only draws on paper. And she still naps everyday. I like this "death by lion" sleeping position: 

She still loves the ocean; I had to stay within 5 feet of her when she was in the waves; she has no sense of self-preservation--only fun in the waves.

 
And she talks. A lot. Her vocabulary currently includes about 50 words and letters, including these that everyone understands: peas, pee, keys, sss, num-num, thirsty (pointing to mouth), church, Jesus, beach, moon, Mommy, Daddy, baby, bear, rarr, fish, meow, doggie, eyes, knee, teeth, hot, hat, yes, no, uh-uh, uh-oh, yeah, yay, whoa, whee!, wow, ooo, oh, down, all done, please, ball, bowl, dots, mine, bye-bye, hi, ow, boo, A, B, D, E, I, O, P, S, T, 8.

And of course there are words that only I understand: potty, nose, chest, shoes, dust, stop, go, (fake snoring), kitty, monkey, what/who is it?, I don't know, up, please, thank you (her worst pronunciation, sounding like 'te-te'), tickle tickle (sounds like thank you), eggs, butterfly and other words she can copy, but can't say without me saying it first. She understands a lot of commands like "Put that in the trash" "Can you walk out to the car with me?" and "Do you want to be in trouble?" to which she already responds "No". Smart kid.

She can do the actions to several songs, but she only sings 4 songs on her own.

• "Moon, moon, moon, garbl tedy dy. Moon, moon, moon, teedi de nommy." 
• "Row, row" (row your boat)
• "Vy vy vy! Vy vy vy!" (Fly little butterfly, fly, fly, fly!) 
• "depedee daa HEY! nineenah HEY! oh dee dee HEY!" (our version of Jingle Bells with Hey! after every line).

She is a great singer, so long as it repeats.

Jessica has just barely learned the difference between sucking on a straw, blowing on hot food (not at us), blowing through a straw (and not just at the top of it), blowing through a flute and humming into a kazoo, and not getting them all mixed up. And last weekend, all of a sudden, she figured out she needed a BIG breath to blow bubbles, and we were pretty pleased. But she can't hold the bubble wand herself in the right place. Understanding dance routines and astrophysics is going to take forever. But in the mean time, she's pretty cute. New "firsts", for her and for us, every day. Like this July 2nd video:

And yes, I'm warming her up for potty training already. She's already barely contained by size 5 diapers when sleeping, she's as long as the changing table, and is interested in the toilet. Now she frequently tells me before she goes in her diaper. But she would only sit on her potty for the 3 M&Ms, until last weekend. She peed in her potty and was so startled she jumped right off! I might've been a little too loud when I saw her going, too. Fun times!