15 Months

Ava is 15 months old and just had her latest well baby visit. She is 24lbs (in the 69th percentile) and 29 3/4 inches (one inch taller than she was at a year). For the second time in a row they measured her wrong at the doctors office so in their records she is much taller and in the 90th percentile for her age! Not true, I'd say she's much closer to average.

Her sense of humor is off the charts and she loves to laugh and make us laugh at the simplest things. Example: Just yesterday Blair snuck up behind Ava and yelled, "Boo!", thus introducing Ava to her new favorite activity. This was quite surprising as she still cries at loud or unexpected sounds, is very cautious of new things and gets startled easily, but this she loved! We have since been taking every opportunity to scare her and she runs around the house saying, "Bo! Bo!" and laughing hysterically. She hasn't gotten the surprise factor down yet though, Blair was lying on the floor this afternoon and Ava walked over, put her face three inches away from his and said, "Bo."

Ava is getting very good at her baby sign language and loves reading her Baby Signs book and practicing. She can do the signs for milk, more, all done and please, and uses them regularly around the house. My favorite is when she looks at me with those sweet little eyes, points to a cookie or some other treat and signs, "please?". How can I resist?

At 15 months Ava has about 11 words that she says regularly including hi, hello, daddy, mama, ducky, ball, uh oh, thank you and good job (both sound very similar and resemble, "tah tu" and "do do"), banana (baba) and just yesterday, Elmo (melmo)! I feel like she must say more words than this since she communicates with me constantly but I'm realizing not everyone is fluent in her babble and body language! She has also continued this month to grow in her babbling technique; adorable sentences come out often and we have so much fun trying to translate. She loves to talk on the phone, she'll walk around with it at her ear and I'll hear gibberish with the occasional "daddy" as she talks. My favorite is when she gets sad and she'll come to me with a pouty lip and babble for a good thirty seconds as if to say, "Mommy, you said I could go outside but I'm not outside yet!"

Ava's also become very interested in dressing herself this last month, though almost everything goes over or on top of her head. She loves going through my drawers and putting on whatever she can find, though embarrassingly enough that is usually my "delicates". Just as long as this dress up party doesn't happen while company is over. She loves trying to put on and take off her shoes and oh yes-- brushing her "hair" and putting makeup on with mommy in the morning. She has her own blush brush and old foundation tub, watches me putting mine on and then brushes on her cheeks and wherever else she feels like. She is a mommy's girl and I love it!

Other big girl things that Ava is doing include washing herself in the tub (she also loves washing her feet with a wipe on the changing table) and climbing up stairs! She is however very afraid of going down stairs and trembles at the top if the gate is open. She is getting better at pointing to body parts too, her favorite of which is her belly!

I mentioned that Ava loves playing with her pots and pans, spoons and bowls, but this month she has perfected the skill of taking the lid off of a milk carton. This is one of her favorite things to do so we've given her a carton of her very own and she enjoys twisting the lid on and off. For her birthday from her Aunt Erin and Uncle Jon she received an ingenious gift, a plethora of wooden fruits, veggies and breads that are held together by velcro and come with a wooden knife and cutting board. These last few weeks she's gotten much better at actually putting each item on the cutting board and cutting through the velcro slits with her knife, and of course tasting each piece and offering up her goods!

This month we went swimming for the first time with Ava (that she remembers), and she loved it! We weren't sure what to expect since she doesn't love the bath and doesn't like getting her face wet, but she did very well. She loved bouncing through the water with us, playing with the balls and noodles that our local YMCA provides and watching all the other swimmers. We also took our first visit to the Philadelphia Zoo this month with Heather, Nat and Ava's cousin Miles. It was, again, a treat to see her react to all the new things and to seeing in person the animals she's read about. She especially loved the monkeys and gorillas and did all her animal sounds on cue! We checked out the children's petting zoo but Ava was not so sure about this whole petting-dirty-animals-among-hundreds-of-other-kids thing. She at least stretched a hand out to pet a goat and a sheep and then promptly fell and stuck her hands in goat poop. Mommy was delighted, to say the least. All in the name of new experiences!

On the matter of teeth: There are still none to speak of and frankly I'm tired of writing, "any day now!" since she was 6 months old. We've had many nights and days of tough teething and were convinced she'd pop one or two out by morning but alas... nothing. I won't say that she should have teeth in the next month or two, I am done guessing. But, I can say firmly that there are at least 6 teeth that are visible under her gums and yes, will come before she goes to kindergarten.

Ok, now on to boring details of size and schedule for mommy to keep track of her growing girl:

At 15 months Ava's between 18 and 24 mos clothes, fitting into 2T in some items. She is wearing size 4 diapers.

Her bedtime routine consists of changing into pj's, drinking milk and reading books with daddy around 7:30, then she sleeps until at least 8:30am and often as late as 9:30am! She also takes two 2-hour naps (on a good day). She has stayed true to her infant self and loves her sleep (as do I).

If you missed them with the last post, check out the most current pictures of our sweet girl in the albums to the left!