Nick Names: Baby baby, Smush
Height: 27 inches (25th percentile)
Weight: 19.4 pounds (68th percentile)
Head: 17.25 inches (50th percentile)
Special Outings: Starbucks drive through, Richard’s house
Visitors: Nicole, Alice & Olivia
Loves: Playing outside, pizza, the cats, brothers, baths
Hates: Certain strangers, getting nails cut, getting nose wiped
Well after saying I wasn’t sure what makes you upset, this month definitely gave me a few examples. For whatever reason, your stranger danger seems to come and go. You’ve always loved daycare and never reacted poorly there, but suddenly you’ll burst into tears if a neighbor that you’ve known since you were born tries to hold you. While you often seem to be more like G in that you don’t want me to hug or cuddle you too much (you’ll go so far as to punch me in the throat to try to get out of a hug), you’ve also been a bit attached to me lately. You want me to sit approximately 2 inches from you on the ground next you to. Close enough that you can have a hand on me or crawl into my lap if needed, and if I try to leave the room or move away, you’ll start crying. That’s definitely new.
Another thing you don’t like - getting your nose sucked or wiped. You were stuffy for a while this month, but not acting sick. No other symptoms, testing negative for everything, sort of acting like allergies, except the doctor said those don’t start until age 2. Either way, you do not want us to help you with it at all, even if you do sleep and eat better afterwards.
We’ve officially accepted that you can crawl and are all over this house now, but now you’re starting to try and walk and we are not ready for that! You pull up on everything you can, and start to take steps while holding on. Not cool. You also had a period of a few days where you figured out how to say Mama and were using it non stop to get my attention.
You are pretty much always on the move, exploring and checking out whatever is new and exciting. You still don’t eat a lot, but you seem to be growing anyway, so we’re worrying less. As long as you’re included in whatever we’re doing, you’re pretty happy. We left you at daycare the other day while we took your brothers out early, and you subsequently had the worst day of daycare you’ve ever had - refusing sleep, crying non stop. It was as if you knew we’d left you there (despite no one going near your room) and were worried we wouldn’t come back. Don’t worry baby baby, you’re part of this family - possibly everyone’s favorite!
I can’t decide if the past 6 months have gone quickly or not. Sometimes it felt like a never ending slog that we were sleepwalking through, but on the other hand I swear we just celebrated F’s first birthday. Either way, we have an official 18 month old on our hands. And thanks to a sleep consultant, we are back on track with sleep and everyone is feeling more like themselves lately. F is back to sleeping and happily chatting in her crib, and it feels like at least one layer of stress has evaporated.
F remains the happiest Spearson, excited to be a part of things, and loves it when we go somewhere. She mostly gets mad when we try to remind her she’s a baby and can’t always do the same things that the older two can. Oh how quickly she’s going to demand equal treatment though. Already she fights back if someone tries to push her away.