15 months

Our big girl is 15 months! A few months ago I bought a research-based development book that's in a series I highly recommend. There is a book for every age, and the book for 1-year-olds is titled "Your One-Year-Old: Fun-Loving and Fussy." Those are the best adjectives for this age. One second she's cracking up at something and the next she's frustrated with the same thing. Any tantrums are short-lived because her attention span can't keep up with her emotions. We spend at least half of her waking hours outside. We need to stay busy to keep her happy so our days are full but fun. Errands take longer because she likes to check things out wherever we go.

I know I say this about every age, but this stage is really so fun. Her curiosity reminds me to literally stop and smell the flowers. Her strong emotions reminds me to live each moment fully and to let myself feel everything. Her sweetness and loving nature reminds me of the good we all have inside of us because of Jesus. Her sense of humor reminds me to laugh and see the fun in all circumstances.

She can say several words and is picking up syllables and can mimic when she's in the right mood. Her most frequent words are: dada, mama, dog dog, that, this, yes (or yeah), hi, cracker (crack-crack), noodles (nah-nahs), broccoli (ck-ck, or something like that), garden (gar-chk, or something similar), duck, and bath. Since she uses about 10 signs regularly, that's a total vocabulary of about 20. Just this morning she attempted to say baby, trash, and yellow. What a chatty girl! One glaring oversight for this age is "no!" She doesn't say it or shake her head no about anything. I know that's coming, but it's nice to have her response usually be "yes." Do you want to go have a snack? Yes! Would you like to go to Target? Yeah! Should we put your shoes on? Yes!

We love you, sweet girl!

Walking down the (not busy) street with some playgroup pals.


About to go down the slide - head first like usual.


Swinging!


Loves the stroller!


Drawing a picture for mommy.


Sunglasses! She just recently started liking to wear these sunglasses. When we go to the pool she will wear them the entire time. Accessorize, girl!

Fun Day Out

I took my 15-month-old toddler to the Botanical Garden today and we had so much fun! We stayed for almost 4 hours and she loved being outside for so long. She loved smelling all of the flowers, feeding the koi fish, playing in the children's farmer's market, and mostly playing in the fountains. It was a great day to celebrate what a fun and curious toddler she has become.



Playing with all of the produce. Cute apron, huh?


She LOVES sitting in kid chairs. The chairs at Journey Kids, the camping chair we have for her, and the beach chair from Grammy are all favorites. We found a classroom with little chairs and she just wanted to sit there for a few minutes.


We found the fountains! Don't worry, she thought this was hilarious!



She was soaked! Next time I'll bring a bathing suit and swim diaper so she can really have fun.


I love my big girl!

More signs

I am trying to get as many videos of her signing as possible. It will be fun to remember how she used to communicate with us!

The baby-friendly sign for flower is to scrunch up your nose and sniff, just like you would do with a flower.



You can see her doing please, more, and eat.

pretend play

Here she is feeding her dog dog. He's in her booster seat with a bib on ready for some milk. Ha!




Sorry for the poor camera angle, we really need a new camera so we can actually see the screen and know what we're shooting!

Signing

Hey all! We've had a busy and fun couple of weeks. We took a trip to Illinois to see family and get the 5 generations together. It was great to see so much of my family! We stayed with the Grabers and we had a blast with them.

5 generations


Violet had a little stomach bug all of last week so we were laying low. Now she's feeling better and we've already been to the pool this week. We are loving summer!

We have also been working a lot on signs. It's hard to get her to demonstrate signs, because as soon as you mention something and she does the sign, she wants it!

Here she is showing "hat"




She can also do more, cheese, please!, airplane, flower, dog, eat, paci, all done, help, and maybe a couple of others I can't remember. We're working on outside, apple, and shoes. It's fun for both of us! Using sign language also really helps ease her frustration and helps her feel empowered to communicate.

Makeup

In order to prove that she's a girl through and through, she has been playing with my makeup a lot lately. Not putting it on, but just taking it out of the bag and looking at it. I guess I didn't screw the mascara together tight enough and, well, this happened.

Notice the black on her lips and teeth? Yea.

Wordless Wednesday

Hat

I'm thinking of writing a book titled "A Love Story: A Girl and Her Hat." She loves this hat and wants to wear it all day long. She has even worn it for a nap! She learned the sign for "hat" quickly because she loves her hat, people wearing hats, and did I mention THIS HAT?

swimming!

We started swimming lessons this week and as predicted Violet LOVES the pool! We've been walking to lessons and it's a great workout for mama while Vi relaxes in the stroller. She has fallen asleep every day on the way home. Swimming wears both of us out!

On our first day of lessons, there was a parade!! They were so excited for us to go to the pool for the first time they paraded alongside us all of the way. Amazing! Actually, it was the local Catholic school's parade and it was super cute and fun to walk next to them for a mile or so.




Jumping in and out of the water



Gliding to her teacher Ms. Becky







Loving the water



We even had T time Tuesday and Theresa came with us to swimming lessons! Next summer we can have lessons with baby DiMartini :-)

Feeding herself?

Little Gym Awards

Last week was Violet's last class of the session at The Little Gym. We have loved going and we've even made some good friends. The last week is called "show week" and they had a big awards ceremony for the kiddos in our birds class.

At the beginning of class - she is shaking her bell.



Mr. Mike (our teacher and the owner) called her up to the podium


Then he gave her a special medal!! She wears this proudly all around the house, to Target, to the farmer's market, and anywhere else we go.



Everyone clapped for her while she checked out her new medal.



We tried to take a class picture...



We love Lindsey and Jake! Jake and Violet have been Little Gym besties for several months now and we see them at least a couple of times a week. Violet LOVES Lindsey and runs to give her a hug every time we see her. What great friends!



So proud of my big girl!


*Super cute tutu leotard is from Auntie Theresa and Uncle Mike - it was the perfect thing to wear for such an occasion!