A Little Catching Up to do...

So much has changed since my last post when P was 11 months old (now almost 16 months!), I'm not even sure where to start, so I'm just going to go for it.

P is just such a pleasure these days and we have fallen so head over heals in love with her as parents. It truly is the greatest thing to be a mom, a dad, and be raising such a beautiful, intelligent, heart warming little girl. We have had a lot of great milestones and adventures over the past 5 months, and one not so great event with the passing of my dad, and Peyton's Papa Tommy.

Sleep:

We have maintained Peyton's bed routine and she is down at 8:00pm every night. She sleeps all through the night and is up between 6:30am and 7:00am every morning. Both John and I feel great about her night time sleep and finally are relaxed about night time. I remember back to the nights when we went to bed feeling anxious about how the night would go in terms of her sleep, and am incredibly grateful we are past that stage. As far as napping goes, she is still taking 1 nap per day and goes down between 12:00pm and 1:00pm. That nap lasts anywhere between 1.5 hours and 3 hours. We have completely cut out her sleep sacs, and she now sleeps in just her jammies. We introduced a light blanked around 14 months and she does well with that. She still sleeps with her white noise, and remains on her tummy most of the night. While we do love how independent of a sleeper Peyton is, we occasionally wish that she could crawl in bed with us and have a nice sleep, but that just does not happen. If she ever gets in bed with us, she simply things its play time. I continually am saying to myself how grateful I am for the sleeping routine we established with Peyton back around 6-8 weeks old. It has been such a lifesaver for us on many occasions, and allows John and I some couple time each night, which we feel is very important for our family. Peyton is a fairly light sleeper.

Clothes:

Currently, Peyton wears 18months-2T clothing.

Eating:

P dropped the bottle during the daytime completely just after her 1st birthday. Shortly after that, we stopped the night bottle, and she now is 100% on sippy cups. She has about 6oz of milk with each meal, and we try to limit her to that. Per her doctors advice, we don't offer her milk outside of meal time very often. In regards to solid food, she still is eating 3 meals per day and eats a wide variety of food. We offered her peanut butter around 15 months, which of course she enjoys. Some of her favorite food includes tofu, hot dogs, yogurt, cheese, eggs, applesauce, and green beans. I have continued to add pureed spinach to her yogurt, applesauce, and pureed carrots to gain her some iron and vegetables.

Talking:

I estimate that P has around 50 words currently. Just after her 1st birthday, her vocabulary started to explode. Her first word (outside mama and dada) was "hello," or "kitty," (we're not sure which came first). She is in a stage now where if you say a word to her, she can almost always repeat it back to you in some form. She says "eat," (and sometimes signs it) when she is hungry, and asks for "milk" when she wants that. Just recently she has begun saying "poo poo" when she is going poo. P's sign language includes the sign for "all done," "bird," "thank you," "eat," and "more."

Walking:

P officially began walking at 15 months. She began taking some steps before that, but she really took off at 15 months.

Doctor Visits:

P's 12 month visit went well. We revisited the doc around 14 months when P had a mild ear infection and was put on antibiotics, which cleared up the infection. P had her first visit to the dentist at 12 months with Dr. Sun. He was wonderful! She has too many teeth to count (including several molars).

Loves anything that's not a toy

LOVES KEYS, CELL PHONES, AND REMOTES

Loves Wheel of Fortune (starting to repeat the letters)

Know's Nana and Grandma's streets (starts calling out Nana when we turn down it)

Loves playing with little kids

When she is done eating, she begins to drop food off her tray

Still working on her obeying "no"

Gets into EVERYTHING (including the toilet and toilet brush cleaner)

Loves reading stories every night before bed (and the "wake up book" with mommy)

Doesn't mind having her teeth brushed

Loves to be tickled (especially with Daddy's whiskers)

Loves bubbles

Loves being outside

Loved to dance to music in the back seat of the car (daddy made a fun compilation of this and posted it to facebook and You Tube), and even asks for music when its not on

P visited the fair with mommy on Labor Day and was able to see and pet cows, goats, pigs and sheep.

She loves making the sounds for animals. Her favorites are cow, horse, cat, dog, pig, lion, monkey, and bird.

I changed my work schedule back at the 4th of July so now I get to stay home with her each morning. I go to work at 10:00am and John picks her up from daycare at 4:30pm. We are still taking her to Debbie's for daycare (and LOVE it!), but we are in the process of finding a back up daycare for P for when Debbie is on vacation.

T minus 1 month till Peyton is 1!!!!

11 months!!! Yep, that means only 1 more month to go until the big 1 year mark!!!! This month has been pretty big for Peyton, full of milestones and activities.

Sleep:

Peyton sleeps 12 hours per night currently. We still put her to bed at 8pm and she usually sleeps until 8am. It is WONDERFUL!! We are blessed with some really great sleep right now. One big change this month was going from 2 naps per day down to 1. We thought and thought about making the change, and eventually Peyton essentially told us when it was time. It was getting more and more difficult to get her down for her 2 daily naps (i.e. we would put her in the crib, and she would play sometimes up to 45 minutes before going to sleep). The change actually went smoothly, and she goes down around noon and sleeps for about 2 hours. This, thankfully did not effect her night sleep at all.

Food:

We are having a blast with food this month! The whole feed the same new food for 4 days in a row went out the window (oops!). Now, we feed her almost everything we are eating (sometimes is a picky eater when we put things on her highchair tray, but she likes to eat almost anything off mommy and daddy's spoon or fork) in addition her staples like tofu, green beans, banana, etc. One new item this month was watermelon and cubed ham. What not to love about watermelon right? Peyton agreed. Besides solids, Peyton is drinking a total of 15-20oz of formula per day (usually about 3 bottles). We are excited to start introducing whole milk in a couple of weeks.

Clothing:

Peyton is currently wearing 12-24 month clothing. Most of the 12 month clothing is getting almost too small, so I anticipate shortly making the move to all 18mo+ clothes.

Milestones/Activities:

-Says "hello" when she see's us on the phone or when she hears the phone ring.

-daddy put up a swing in the cherry tree in the front yard, and this has become one of her new favorite activities (she never took to any kind of swinging until now).

-Standing on her own

-Opening cupboards

-Spent the weekend over in Moses Lake visiting with her great grandma and cousins from Spokane

-Gives kisses

-improved her waving and waves even when she hears someone say "bye bye."

-Starting to understand peek-a-boo

-starting to understand more cause and effect

-banging on pots and pans with spoon

-Plays in kitchen drawers

-Still looooooves the kitty

-Still loooooooves Wheel of Fortune (only show she will sit and actually watch)

-Learned to point with pointer finger

-One of her new favorite toys is balloons (loves to see them at the grocery store)

-Most of her favorite items are not her toys, rather items like remotes, magazines, DVD's

-Loves to pull clothes out of her dresser drawers

See you next month for her big year update!!!!

Sweet baby P is 10 months old!!

Well, its been 10 wonderful months with our beautiful and intelligent daughter. She has grown a tremendous amount physically and mentally over the past 10 months. This month, Peyton has been an absolute joy. Her little personality shines through, and she is still very active and such a happy girl.

• Milestones:
  -Pulling herself to standing
• -Eating ice cream for the first time (she loved it!)
• -Says "Uh Oh," when she drops something
• -Drinking her milk mostly through a sippy cup during the day
• -Starting to stand independently (just for a couple of seconds)
• -Wears pig tails in her hair (so cute!)
• Eating:
• This month, Peyton has made the transition to eating more solids than she is bottles. She is a pretty good eater most of the time, and is willing to try new things. She still takes a bottle/sippy cup about 4 times a day (this includes her bed time bottle), and has about 5-6 oz each of those times. This month, she also drank the last of my breast milk that we had stored up, so we made the switch to formula about a week after she turned 10 months. She doesn't seem to like it as much as the breast milk, but she still does ok with it. Some of her favorite solids include tofu (still!), banana's, and applesauce. We are working on getting her to like more meat's.

Sleeping:
Is great!! What can I say, we are in sleeping bliss! Peyton still has a bedtime of 8:00pm and she sleeps all night, waking up at about 6:30-7:30am. She is still taking 2 naps daily, but we are thinking she is almost ready to transition to 1 nap, so we may be trying that out soon.

Doctor:

We took Peyton back to the doctor to recheck her low iron (diagnosed last month). She has been on iron drops for a month, and we have also been working on getting her more iron rich foods (I put spinach puree in a lot of her foods). They rechecked her iron, and it looked perfect! Dr. Walsh still would like her to be on iron drops until she turns 1, and then they will recheck her levels at that point. Next appointment with Dr. Walsh will be at her 12 month visit in May.

Events:

This month, Peyton was invited to Henry Medina's 1st birthday where she saw a concert put on by Reces Monkey's. She had a blast and danced the entire hour they played. Peyton has also really taken to liking the show Wheel of Fortune. When its on, she is glue to the TV the entire half hour. We took Peyton swimming at the Mountlake Terrace Pavillion pool twice this month, and she loved that as well.

9 Months old!

Well the time has come where Peyton has been out of my belly as long as she was growing inside my belly. Our baby girl has turned 9 months old! If we had one word for this month in regards to Peyton, I think it would be ACTIVE!!! This girl can move!

Sleep:
Thankfully, John, Peyton, and I are all enjoying full nights of sleep for the majority of the time. Peyton still goes to bed at 8:00pm every night, and wakes up for the day sometime between 6:00am and 7:30am. We did have about a week this month where she was waking up in the middle of the night pretty upset, and we attributed that to some teething (thank you baby Tylenol for saving us!). Naps are still occurring twice a day (about 10:00am and then again at about 3:00pm), and last from 1-2 hours each. Peyton still sleeps on her tummy in a sleep sac.

Food:
This has been a big month for solid foods. Peyton is such a great eater, and we feel very blessed for that. Some of here favorites right now include banana's, tofu, and green beans. This month, we also introduced scrambled eggs, salmon, ground beef, spinach and yogurt. We are feeding her 3 solid meals per day. She also is still receiving 100% breast milk in her bottles, drinking about 6-7oz per bottle, every 4 hours or so.

Doctor Visits:
At Peyton's check-up this month, she ranked in the 75th percentile for head circumference, height, and weight. Her weight was 20.6 lbs, and height 26 inches. She received some additional vaccines, and they also poked her toe to check for iron. Turns out, her hematacrit was a little low, and that means she has been put on an iron supplement. We have also been attempting to get her more iron in her diet by adding things such as red meat and spinach. We will go back in 1 month to check her iron levels again. Dr. Walsh indicated that Peyton is very healthy!

Clothes:
Peyton is currently wearing 12-18 month clothing.

Milestones: Most of her milestones this month seem to be improvements on skills that she started last month. Some of those include:

• waving bye-bye
• Clapping
• wiggles to music
• Saying mama, dada
• Crawling very quickly!

Some new things Peyton is doing this month include:

• trying to say "kitty," but not quite there yet
• Standing up while holding onto the couch, or side of her crib, etc.
• 2 front teeth coming in, as well as the tooth just to the right of her middle top teeth

We enjoy lots and lots of laughing from Peyton these days. She continues to mimic sounds we make. She gets around the house very quickly and efficiently in her walker.