MN Girl in Eire: 18 Months!

How is it possible that Gemma is now a year and a half old (as of yesterday!)? If I had to choose one word to sum up the past month, it would be 'independence'. In fact, one day when I picked up Gemma from creche, the main carer in her room called her 'Miss Independent'. She now wants to do everything herself, or at least try! In the past month, Gemma:

-Has wanted to feed herself with her spoon/fork, although she has difficulty getting the food on the utensil at times. But, she also gets upset if we try to help get the food on the utensil. We've compromised by we scoop the food, then set the utensil down on the plate, then she picks it up, eats the bite, then sets the utensil down again. She also doesn't like to have things cut up into pieces anymore (bananas, cheese); she wants to take bites out of it. Overall, meals are hit and miss. Some days she gobbles down her lunch or dinner, other days she doesn't eat much.

-Despite hit and miss meals (which I think is pretty normal toddler behaviour), Gemma continues to be a big, healthy girl. The last time I weighed and measured her on January 20th, she was 33 3/8 inches tall and weighed 28 pounds, 10 ounces. Both are between the 90 and 95 percentile. She wears size 24 month and 2T clothes.

-Sunday night was Gemma's last bedtime bottle. I know I should have gotten rid of it months ago, but it's the only milk we could get her to drink! And, she was down to 2-3 ounces. After she finished the bottle on Sunday night we talked about how she was a big girl now and didn't need a bottle, then had her throw it into the garbage. Then we cheered and clapped. We didn't have any meltdowns last night without it, so fingers crossed it continues that way!

-Gemma is now tall enough to open all the doors in our house! She started to do this while I was in New York. Nothing is safe anymore!

-Her kitchen continues to be her favourite toy, along with some eggs that have different shaped bottoms that she got for Christmas. We still spend a lot of time reading books, and Gemma can now ask for some with words. She calls her nursery rhyme book 'row row' (row, row, row your boat is in it), she calls a book with a clock in it 'tick tock', and she calls a picture book with babies 'baby'.

-It seems like Gemma is saying a new word every day. Some that I can think of are: happy, apple, ham, cheese, cold, door, more, one more, all gone, I do, wow, and hot. She says 'no' very clearly now and sometimes shakes her finger at the same time. She also says 'ah ah' while shaking her finger. Often she'll say 'no, no, no' when she's doing something she shouldn't be doing! She can also nod her head yes and say 'uh huh'. It's getting easier all the time for her to communicate what she wants!

-She continues to like to help, especially putting things in the garbage.

-Gemma has started to want to sit at her daddy's desk and use her crayons. She'll go to the chair and say 'uppy'.

-Gemma likes to do 'Ring Around the Rosie', especially the falling down part!

-Gemma is a sweet little girl who loves to give hugs and kisses and share her Cheerios! And, she's not content to just hand them to you, she has to put them in your mouth!

Again, we are so lucky to call Gemma ours, and she has brought so much joy and happiness to us!

Some photos from the past month: