The Ashlan show: 16 1/2 months old

In the last week or two, Ashlan has begun to talk a lot! Her first and favorite phrase is currently “I stuck”. Haha! I think it happened because she was either in her high chair or bumbo seat and we were always asking her if she was stuck. She says it all the time now, and sometimes (but rarely) even when she is clearly not stuck. About a week or two ago now, we were in Publix just going grocery shopping, and to everyone who would listen, she would scream out, “I’m stuck!” as we passed them, lol! She is such a riot to watch! And a few days ago she actually said, “I pooped”, and lo and behold, she did! She said it very matter-of-factly, so we were thinking she actually knew what she was saying this time, lol! She has only done it one other time since, but that’s a great start for a little one who’s only 16 months old! She also just started saying “I’m full”, though we’re not sure if she’s 100% on the concept because sometimes she continues eating, lol! She repeats everything we say and now she even blows kisses when we ask her to. She waved goodbye to Dan the other day when he was leaving for work and she was blowing kisses to him through the window. It was so cute.

She is definitely beginning to learn colors. Every time she is in the bath, or playing with her colored MegaBloks, I always pick up a foam letter/number or a block and say what color it is. Sure enough, she is beginning to pick them up herself and say, “blue” if it’s blue, or “red” if it’s red. I have been doing this for months so it’s finally beginning to pay off. I don’t push it, but for a few minutes here or there, I tell her colors, and I guess the repetition has started to sink in. She’s pretty good with red or blue, but is still working on yellow, orange, and green. It will come soon enough. I’m thrilled that she can identify even two colors at her age. She is also pretty good at identifying certain things like balls and dogs. She will point and say the word when we see one. Some words are definitely not fully developed yet, like she says, “Ba” for ball and “dah” for dog, but she does it so consistently, that I’m sure that is what she’s identifying. I also go over numbers from 1-5 with her a lot (don’t want to confuse the poor girl too much), and she doesn’t know how to count yet, but she will repeat numbers after me, especially two, four, and five (and she usually says the whole number, not just the beginning letters). And she is still identifying animals on books and body parts like nose, eyes, ears, etc, but she has done that since she turned one year old. I’m glad she hasn’t forgotten them!

She also knows the difference between the fan remote control and the TV remote control, AND the “fake” TV remote control that looks exactly the same but we took the batteries out of it. She somehow knows that the heavier one is the only one that works! For the fan remote control, she points it at the fan and looks up. As far as eating goes, she is finally starting to use the spoon a little more now. I will still feed her about 75% of whatever she’s eating, like yogurt or cottage cheese, but she does the other 25%. It’s still a little messy, but she has made a lot of progress…especially since she’s been “using” the spoon for months now (meaning she would not let us feed her by ourselves, she had to hold a spoon).

When leaving the house as we do at least once a day for the gym usually, she will wait at the door until I put the alarm on, and then as soon as it’s on, she’ll reach for the handle. She can definitely reach it and even has started to turn it. She can’t actually open our doors yet, but we were at a playdate on Friday that had different doorknobs than ours (pull down ones), and she opened their door several times.

And we have another tooth that poked through the other day. This one is another molar. We found out because she was really hot so we gave her some ibuprofen and she then threw up, haha. Big surprise. LOL! Good old Ashlan and her teeth. I don’t care what anyone says…throwing up might not be a symptom of teething, but teething is definitely the cause of her throwing up. And unfortunately, the gym daycare happened to see Ashlan in one of her intense moods because she threw up there! Oh, poor workers! I took her home immediately, and she fell asleep in the car, so obviously she needed a nap…and ended up reverting back to taking two naps for a couple days, which she hasn’t done in a month or two. It seems like she’s back to one nap a day now though, even though it’s usually two hours or less. About once every two or three weeks it’s a 3 hour nap, but that’s pretty rare.

Last Friday morning we had a playdate at a friend’s house which was just at the other end of our neighborhood development. It’s nice that we are starting to get to know so many people that live around us. It makes it a lot easier to get together for playdates and to go out! Ashlan had her first go-round in a bounce house, and she loved it! It was pretty hot outside, and she was one of the only kids that stayed outside about 99% of the time. That’s good to know since we live in FL, lol! Maybe she has some tendencies from me after all!

So two times in the last two or three weeks, we have found Caesar locked in Ashlan’s room when we’re looking for him at night to let him out before we go to bed, lol! He definitely thinks that he has to protect her, and you know, I think she’s getting more gentle with him as well. I was watching her pet him and he just looked at her, and they both did great! She was laughing and kept petting him, and he just laid there and soaked it up. I’m so happy they’re at least getting along better now.

She has started doing this a lot lately...looking between her legs.

At our friend's house. Ashlan is the one with black pants on, Ashlan's BFF, Audrey, is wearing pink and her momma, Laura, is in the blue.

Ashlan wiped out after this one. LOL!

Having so much fun!

Whoops, lost her balance.

Pool is finally in the 80's, woohoo! This is our 2nd time in the pool this year and since it's so much warmer, we'll probably start going in every other day or so. Ashlan had so much fun, and we did too watching her!!

Still trying to get used to her floatie device. This is the first time we used it and she took to it just fine.

Sitting on the second step.

Her new Kangaroo Climber is in front of her. I bought it off a friend and it was hardly used! Such a great deal since Ashlan wants to climb on everything lately.