Seventeen Months

The little girl is seventeen months now. She continues to keep us on our toes and finds trouble wherever she goes. She loves to explore and check out anything new. We definitely keep a close eye on her. One of her upper canines finally came through, so we're all pretty excited about that. I think the other canine is close, but it's hard to get her to stay still with her mouth open long enough for me to look.

Her love of shoes continues and has even progressed to her trying to say the word. It's mostly just "sshh" at this point, but she's working on it. She even tries to put her own shoes and socks on now. She can't do it, but she tries. If she sees a pair of shoes, she immediately tries to put them on - doesn't matter who they belong to.

Stella and Scout continue to be good friends. She loves to play with Scout and sometimes tries to get her tail. She tries to grab it when Scout is busy playing with one of us and it's pretty funny. She's also recently started helping us feed Scout her dinner. It's pretty cute. She comes out to the garage with us and we hand her the cup full of Scout's food. Then she carries it out to Scout's dish (with us helping so she doesn't dump it out along the way) and pours it in (again, with us helping to make sure it all ends up in Scout's dish) and then she carries the empty cup back out to the garage and tosses it in the dog food container. It's fun to see her learning and being able to help with little things like that. She's starting to help us when we pick up her room every night, too. She knows where things go and will put them away if we tell her to.

I have become convinced, this month, that the Lord created toddler mealtimes with my need to develop patience in mind. Stella used to be a great eater. Not so anymore. Even her go to standards that I could always count on her to eat are being tossed by the wayside. Every time I feed her anything these days, I just hold my breath and hope she'll eat it. I have a bit of an obsession with feeding her at least some fruits and/or vegetables with each meal, so it's frustrating to me when she won't eat them. Of course, sometimes that's all she'll eat, so I guess it evens out. I'm slowly learning to be patient, not let food all over the floor upset me, and relinquish control of her eating - at least somewhat. It's hard, though. We're also working on her abilities to feed herself. She's improving with her use of utensils and we've started giving her regular cups here and there with water in it so she can learn to drink out of a cup. It's all very exciting, but will be even more exciting when she's really learned to use a spoon, fork, and cup and can feed herself well.

This month, the little girl has discovered the mail truck. She sees it when we're out walking. She sees it in front of our house. And she loves it! She gets so excited, especially when it's in front of our house and she sees the mail lady putting the mail in the mailboxes. I think, perhaps, that the Easter Bunny will be bringing a little mail truck toy for her this year.

Stella got her first goose egg this month. She tripped at the park and smacked her head on the ground. It didn't last long and didn't seem to slow her down at all.

Overall, she's a very busy, active, and happy little girl. She loves to sit with us and look at pictures of herself or watch videos of herself on our phones. Tonight I was watching some videos of her on my phone with her and I went back to some older videos from last summer. It's amazing how much she's grown and changed since then. I'm excited to see how much she'll change and develop over the coming months.

The Little Gym

I recently signed Stella up for a class at The Little Gym. Her class is called the Birds and they're aged 10-19 months. I thought it would be good for her to be around other little kids and get used to being in a setting with some structure led by another adult. It's a parent/child class, so I'm in there with her and she seems to really like it. They do some singing and they learn some things like somersaults. Then they get to explore the gym. There are various things set up for them to crawl around on, hang on, climb on, etc. Then they get some time to play with balls and they do bubbles. With kids of that age group, it's mostly organized chaos, but it's pretty fun to watch and the kids are super cute.

We've noticed, however, that Stella's gym time has had some interesting repercussions. Things have gotten pretty exciting around here and scenes like this at the gym...

... are translating into scenes like this at home:

(and, no, that's not a door Stella is standing in front of. That's a window).

16 Months

Stella is 16 months old. Actually, she has been for over a week now, but that's beside the point. It's been a very busy but fun month for us. She's moving faster, which means I have to move faster. But, it's been really fun to see her pick up on a lot of new things this month.

Now that she's walking around more outside, we've been putting big kid shoes (hard-soled shoes) on her more. She loves it! She loves the noise they make and will walk around on the hard floors with her shoes on to hear it. She's recently moved up a shoe size, so lately we've been trying shoes on her a lot to see which of our plethora of hand-me-down choices will fit. She loves trying them on and often gets upset if I try them on and then take them off again without letting her walk around in them. And, she's also recently discovered that she can put on our shoes (or slippers, as the case may be) and that's even more fun. She loves shoes! What can I say - she's definitely my daughter.

This month, she's also added a couple words to her repertoire. She now says car (ka) and cookie (ke-ka). And her signing is really picking up. We started signing with her months ago. The only sign she seemed to pick up on was "more". So, we sort of gave up and stopped signing with her. Then, all of a sudden, she started signing. Lots. So, we're back on the signing bandwagon and are starting to work on some new ones. Her "more" sign has morphed into a greater meaning. She now uses it whenever she wants anything, whether it's more of what she's been having (or doing) or something completely new. When it's something completely new, it's always fun trying to guess just what it is she wants. Her signing is awfully cute because she can't do a lot of the signs correctly, so she does the best she can and we love it. I suppose maybe I should try to capture that on video. Anyway, she currently signs "more", "milk", "please", and "all done". We're starting to work on "thank you", but she hasn't quite got it yet.

Stella has developed an interest in climbing into and sitting in things. It started with Scout's bed (which Scout didn't appreciate).

Then it moved to her toy box.

Now it's whatever looks like it might be big enough to hold her.

I took her to the park for the first time a few weeks ago when the weather warmed up. She loved being outside and walking around on the concrete. And she looks like she's having a grand time in these pictures. Don't be fooled. She was freaked out by everything from the wood chips on the ground in the playground area to the slide to the swing. Fortunately, by the time we left she had warmed up to the slide, a little. We've gone back and she's done better. But, we're still working on getting her to like the swing.

She remains very curious and is pretty good at opening drawers to discover what's inside. Her current favorites are my pots and pans drawers and the drawer with all her plastic spoons, bowls, bibs, etc.

She recently found my swimming goggles and thought they were hilarious. But, I had a hard time getting a picture of her before she tried to take them off. I had to convince her to take a few moments to check them out in the mirror.

She likes to eat and especially loves fruit. But, she's starting to show a lot more independence now and it's often through food and during her feedings. Things that she used to love she has all of a sudden started rejecting like it's the plague. She refuses cheese. This greatly saddens both Mr. Frisby and I. She used to love it and would eat it up great. Now, she just throws it on the floor. She used to eat almost everything we gave her. Now she's figured out that she can choose what she eats and once she decides she's not going to eat something, her mind has little chance of being changed. She currently loves Blueberries and Raspberries. At least they're healthy. She's also learning to feed herself with a fork. She does pretty well, but sometimes loses patience and just throws the fork overboard and uses her hands. She does okay with a spoon if we help her, but she has a hard time getting the spoon to her mouth right side up if we don't. We're working on it.

She does love desserts, ice cream in particular, and she comes running to get some if she sees us eating any.

It seems like she developed and changed a lot this month. She's figuring out that objects have a purpose. The other day, I looked over and she had my keys and was holding one up to the door knob. Fortunately for us, she isn't physically able to turn door knobs and open doors, but she gets how it works. She picks up on a lot of things just by hearing us talk about things or watching us do things. And, it's surprising sometimes how quickly she learns.

Stella is still working on her upper canines. The teething process with her has been really pretty easy and painless. Until these last two. These two are beasts! She's been working on them for over a month and they've been the cause of a lot of lost sleep for all of us. Every day I think, "maybe today will be the day they finally poke through." And, every day, it's not. But, one of these days they'll finally come in and her teething will be over for awhile. We hope it's very soon. For all our sakes.

She still loves Scout and they have a good time playing together. She tries to chase Scout around, but of course she's not fast enough. She has fun anyway. She likes to tease Scout with her toys, too. She actually likes to tease all of us with whatever she can. It makes me nervous for when she gets older.

And that's Stella. She makes our world go round.

Gymnastics Weekend

Stella just turned 16 months and a post about her is forthcoming. But, I wanted to blog about Gymnastics Weekend first. What is Gymnastics Weekend, you ask? Well, it's the weekend that my sister and my nephew came to town for his gymnastics meet at Stanford. My nephew is ten and lives in Utah. He doesn't often have gymnastics meets out of state, so this was our first opportunity to watch him compete. Obviously, gymnastics was a big part of the weekend. But, we did other fun things with them while they were here, too.

First off was a day trip to Pinnacles National Monument. My sister wanted to do a hike there. I was hesitant to do it with Stella because the trails at Pinnacles are not, shall we say, stroller friendly. We went on a Friday, so Mr. Frisby couldn't join us which meant I would be packing Stella the entire way unless she was of a mind to let someone else hold her. And you can never bank on that with her. In spite of my reservations, I let everyone talk me into doing the hike and it turned out great. Stella was not really of a mind to let anyone else hold her for more than a few moments, but she was of a mind to walk almost the whole hike. And it was actually really good for her because she's always been a little timid about walking around outside and the hike got her really used to walking on different terrain. She loved it, it was a great hike, and we had fun.

The only scary part for Stella was going through the caves. They made her nervous. Which isn't that surprising since it was her first encounter with a cave. I tried to get a picture of her near the entrance to the first cave we went in, but she was freaking out and would have none of it. Once we made it through, though, she had no problem stopping for a photo on the other side.

We hiked up to a reservoir and stopped there for a little break. Stella loved it. She was able to run around and enjoy the outdoors. She also had fun collecting everyone's water bottles and carrying them around.

From the reservoir, you have the option of continuing on the trail which eventually gets you back to the parking lot or you can turn around and go back the way you came. We opted to turn around and go back the way we came since it would be a lot shorter.

I had my sister snap this pic of Stella and I on the way back so I would have proof that I was actually there.

My nephew's gymnastics meet was Sunday morning. Mr. Frisby couldn't go since he had too many responsibilities at church. I decided I would rather chase Stella around a noisy gymnasium while watching my nephew compete than chase her around AND try to keep her quiet and happy at church, so we headed to Stanford to watch the meet.

It was really fun to watch my nephew. They're split into levels based on age and skill level, so I think most of the kids competing were between 10 and 12, with maybe a few that were a little older. When they all came out for their march in, I just thought they all looked so small. And then they started doing their routines and it's amazing what they can do! Here's my nephew in action (I would like to have taken our DSLR to take some good pics, but I knew that would be impossible if I had Stella to keep track of, so all of these pics are from my iPhone):

Pommel Horse

Rings

Parallel Bars

High Bar

I took a couple pics of his floor routine, but it was farther away so they were pretty blurry. And the vault was so far away I didn't even attempt it. Stella had a great time climbing up and down the bleachers and collecting water bottles (she has a thing for water bottles, in case you couldn't tell) and it was really fun to watch my nephew. Great weekend!