18 month update

Zoe had her 18 mo. check up yesterday, and she has finally broken the 20 pound threshold (this is particularly important because carseats are supposed to stay rear facing until babies weigh 20 lbs). She weighs 20 lbs 11oz and is 30 3/4 inches tall.

She now combines 2 and sometimes 3 or more words into simple sentences, for example:

"Dada's slippers," "Mama's book," "Uh-oh Nico's shoe" and yesterday morning as I was moving her over to my side of the bed from where she had been lying beside her father, she said, "bye, bye Dada! Baby nurse." What can we say - she's brilliant! :-) She can't say her own name yet, so refers to herself as baby. I am trying to teach her to call herself Ya-Ya like Nico used to, although Nico has finally mastered Zoe and no longer calls her Ya-Ya. She loves learning people's names, and talks about people she knows all the time. She also loves telling us what kinds of sounds different animals make - woof-woof, moo, meow, gobble-gobble, quack-quack, and she knows and can say most of her colors and enjoys drawing with crayons.

Here favorite books these days are "Go Dog Go!" and a book of Mother Goose nursery rhymes. She asks us to read them over and over again.

She is walking more steadily now, although she sometimes still has her hands out to the sides to help her balance and she still falls quite often. Her legs still have a bit of that drunken sailor look. She doesn't really crawl much at all anymore. She is working on climbing, and at some point when her walking is more solid she will begin to run - look out!

She loves going on walks, playing outside in the sandbox and swings, playing with her stuffed animals, and she has just recently mastered building towers of blocks by herself!

And those of you who know well of our struggles with sleep may wonder how she is sleeping these days. Well...it is improving, and there are certainly those nights now where she sleeps soundly in her own bed until 4 or 5 am, thank goodness! Most nights, though, she still wakes once or twice before 5 am, but Lester has been great about helping her get back to sleep in her own bed most of the time. From 5am on, Zoe and I cuddle, nurse, and doze together in either our bed our hers until she wakes up for the day - usually around 7am. If I've gotten solid sleep until this point, it is one of my favorite parts of the day. If I've been woken up by her repeatedly throughout the night, then the early morning hours can feel like sheer torture!

I did something totally radical last week while I was on vacation...after 18 months of interrupted sleep every night and waking up early with the baby almost every morning, I slept at our cabin overnight and had my very first night of uninterrupted sleep since October, 2007! Wow! It was amazing! I need to do that more often! Zoe and Lester did just fine without me, so I know she can make it through the early morning hours without our nursing ritual if she needs to. What freedom!