Rooney, 14 Months
- Has taken 6 steps on her own
- Learned how to climb up and down stairs
- Can click and twist her tongue
- Points at her crib to let us know she's ready for bed
- Blows her nose when I put a Kleenex up to it
- Has a will of her own at times
- Likes to rub her messy hands in her hair
- Has started to daydream / space out at times
- Jumps/bounces on her bed
- Does a little head tilt and knows she's cute
Loves: buckles (on the wagon, stroller and shopping carts), animals, eating, chasing the vacuum, wagon rides, bike rides, stroller rides and swinging (anything outside!)
Does NOT like: waiting to go bye bye, getting her bike helmet on, getting washed up after a meal, wearing a sun hat
Weight:24 pounds, 3 ounces
Clothing size:24M/2T
Shoe size: 5
Words: Hi, daddy, mama, baby, bye and ba (banana) are her favorite words this month
Rooney is not a big talker, but she can say a good number of words for her age. It's also been really cool to see that she knows what other words mean even when she can't say them. Coat, shoes, outside, wagon, dance, banana, drink...she responds correctly to all of those things. I just find it amazing how much she is learning. Every single word in our language we have to teach her!
Besides her handful of words, she has other ways of communicating with us. She points at what she wants. She growls. She signs eat, more and all done. She shakes her head no. Even when she shakes her head at something I want her to try, I am thankful that she is able to communicate with me in a way that is not crying.
She seems to enjoy signing so much that I am adding a few new words for her to learn: sleep, please and help.
Teeth: 7. She has 4 full teeth and there are 3 more that have broken through and are coming in (two are molars). I feel like these teeth are taking forever to come in! (We have yet to take her to the dentist...when did you do that with your kids?)
Food: We're pretty sure she hit a growth spurt this month! She has been eating a ton at home and at day care. She asks to get in her high chair numerous times a day and signs "more" a lot! She feeds herself and sometimes it can take her 45 minutes to eat.
- She absolutely loves bananas. Some days she has five! Luckily it hasn't affected her bowels at all, so we just keep giving them to her. We started joking that she needs to be a banana for Halloween :)
- She also loves avocado 9 times out of 10. It is so nice to have this predictability when other foods she will like one day and not the next.
- She doesn't love meat (except beef sticks) or pasta.
- Mandarin oranges are a hit!
- She thinks it's funny to act like she's going to feed us, and then put it in her own mouth and laugh. (Unless it's something she doesn't want...then she feeds it to us :))
- She loves when she gets to eat what we are eating (but we typically do chores in the kitchen while she eats dinner and eat after she goes to bed).
- Tried her first apple and loved it!
She was also lucky and got to share fro yo a few times this month!
She also insists to eat with her leg up like this:
Milk: We offer Roo milk for all her meals (3) and snacks (2). She doesn't drink much...I'd say 10 oz or less per day (which is perfectly fine with us). We bought coconut milk instead of organic whole milk last week. She didn't seem to notice a difference in taste at all. She had been doing fine with the cow's milk (from what we could tell), but Eric suggested switching her (probably after watching a documentary :)), so we went for it. I think we were both a bit uneasy having her drink so much dairy, since neither of us do. Coconut milk has lots of fat, calcium, vitamin D and iron, so it seems like a great option. She still drinks whole milk at day care and when we visit family, since that's what they have access to (and we are so blessed that they buy it for us so we don't have to transport it!). So, we're just trying to being relaxed about the whole thing :) My main concern is that she has enough fat to keep her body weight up and brain growing as it should!
This month we also gave her veggie juice from our new juicer, but she only took one drink. I don't think she was a fan. We keep her water cups around the house and she will often take drinks of those while she is playing.
Naps: 1 or 2. She takes one nap at day care and two (most days) at home on the weekends and Wednesdays. If she only gets one afternoon nap, she will wake up (typically 1.5 hours) very cranky, so we try to do one in the morning and then try for a second in the afternoon. Most days it works, some days not.
She still sleeps with her pacifier. I even bought 5 more last month because somehow they disappear and we like to have a handful in her crib so she can always find one at night. We have talked about not giving her one before bed, but letting her find one in the crib if she wants one. We've only done that once, though. I think in the next 10 months (til she is 2) we will keep making strides that way. If she has one in the car I try to remember to pull it out of her mouth when we get where we're going. She doesn't seem to care. I don't want it to hinder her speech development!
Bedtime: 5:45-6:45 pm. Rooney has been less grumpy in the evenings so we've been able to put her to bed a little later! She's so busy and it seems like her sleep signs are fading that we often ask her What's your bedtime? (like the Visa commercial with the little girl and Ray Lewis - check it at 0:12).
I'm sure 6:00 seems like an early bedtime to some parents, but at least it's later than 5:30 that we were doing last month! It's fun to get some playtime in during the weekdays. We aren't consistent down to the minute, but we keep it in the general range based on her temperament at the time. We keep it early because she seems to sleep longer (13 hours) with an earlier bedtime. She doesn't fight bedtime and I can't remember the last time she did.
Night Sleep:12-13 hours. Closer to 12 probably because of her later bedtime. But it's worth it to us to get an extra hour of play time! Before bed Eric reads a story from her Bible (she doesn't sit still for books, though) and then we put her in the sleep sack and do a group hug while we pray. By that point she is pointing at her crib and is ready to go in. However, for some reason (sickness? teething?) many times this month she would wake up crying 45 minutes after she goes to bed, so then she'd get up for a few minutes to calm down.
Bath: Twice a week, Sundays and Wednesdays. Occasionally we have to add in an extra bath, or just sit her by the bathroom sink and get her hair wet (to get out the banana or whatever else she has rubbed in it). She typically is excited to get in the bath, but then is ready to get out when daddy is done. Her baths are short (5 minutes). She has never been mad that she has to get out.
Day care: One of my favorite things they have been doing at day care lately is getting out of the room and going for walks. They have even been able to go outside a few days. If the weather is not great, they go for wagon rides through the church. It's a very large building and Rooney really loves these mini field trips! Miss Shannon said she took Roo in the wagon for two hours and she still didn't want to get out when it was over! She loves the wagon! I was in a meeting the other day and was pleasantly surprised to see these cuties rolling by as we got done (the perks of a day care at work!). I think we need to find a secondhand wagon...
Our local zoo also visited a couple weeks ago and brought a hedgehog, salamander, duck and alligator! I was able to pop in and check it out. Rooney touched them all - I was so proud!
There is also a little playground outside the church that they play at sometimes. Roo likes to eat the wood chips :)
Health: I am so glad we are coming out of the winter cold/flu season! Even with all those probiotics from the fro yo ;), Rooney was sick twice (with fevers) in the past month, which was no fun at all! It made for a rough couple of days in our house.
When she was sick and I was attempting to take care of her and work from home, I put her chair in front of the TV and turned on her first TV show. It lasted about five minutes :)
Walking: She is not walking. She will take steps occasionally, when we prompt her. She has been able to stand up in the middle of the floor for a while now but she doesn't do it every day. She likes to walk with her walker, though!
She also learned how to climb onto her rocking chair footstool in her nursery (although the getting down part was still a little rough when we shot this video :)):
Imitation: This is new! She has started to do things that she sees us doing, and it's so cute. She puts socks on (top of) my feet when I’m getting ready, feeds me her food, and brings me my shoes when she senses we are going bye bye. The funniest was when we saw her taking all the clothes out of her laundry basket and was shaking them one by one. It took me a while but then I realized that I do something every similar when I fold laundry, and she sees me do it every single Wednesday! She also tries to imitate daddy when he is vacuuming – she goes and gets her walker! It’s adorable.
Fun stuff: Rooney is happiest when she's outside on an adventure!
She loves being thrown onto the bed:
Had a play date with Mia Larson:
And spent time this month with two of her great-grandpas:
Parenting: The beginning of this month was so fun that I've started to ask Eric when he wants another one :) I don't think either of us is really ready, but we've had some really fun times as a family!
We've also spent a lot more time disciplining in the past couple weeks. She likes to throw food on the floor and then shake her head no and say uh oh. I've found it frustrating at times so I have to remind myself that this is a completely normal part of her development and growing independence.
