{Happy 15 Months!!!}

Oh how much our Baby Girl has grown in these past 3 months! She turned 15 months on Dec 28th.

She sleeps 12-13 hrs at night and does either 1 or 2 naps during the day each for 1-2 hours. She never fights going to bed and usually asks for her naps with her sign for sleep. We lay her down in bed with 1 pacifier in the mouth, 1 in her hand, and either her stuffed lion or baby doll in the other hand.

She drinks whole milk, and uses her 12 [yes, 12] teeth to chomp through everything we eat. She uses a spoon and we are working on forks. She can eat a bowl full of cereal all by herself and then can pick it up and drink the milk out of the bowl with minimal mess. Seriously amazing. She loves all sorts of foods [except tomatoes] and is not scared of a little spice. She also eats a ton of food. She eats at least as much, if not more, than I do for breakfast and sometimes for lunch and dinner, too.

She says "Dada" and "ahht-sigh" [outside] and "nana" [banana] and "yes" and "uhs dat" [what's that? she points to everything and asks "uhs dat?!?"] and sometimes "mama." Her favorite sound effects are dinosaur roars [If you ask her what a dinosaurs says she will roar/growl for you] and blowing spit bubbles. We are also working on other animals sounds and have gotten monkey and snake a few times.

She has also picked up some sign language after the prayer/food incident. She can sign "food", "prayer", "more", "milk", "sleep", "pacifier", and we're working on "please". She loves using sign and being able to communicate with us. It's wonderful to see her eyes light up once she realizes that she conveyed and we understood the same message. [We are definitely planning on using baby sign for real with our next children instead of starting it so late in the game. It really is helpful].

She has also learned Spanish. There is some serious Spanglish going on in this house and so she knows the Spanish words just as well, or better in a lot of cases for the following: beso/kiss, comida/food, leche/milk, zapatos/shoes, venga/come here, ven aqui/come here, vamos/let's go, quieres mas?/do you want more?, etc.... lots of basic commands. So smart. A common phrase in our Spanglish would be, "Baby-sita, go find your zapatos because es la hora de salir." and she would understand me and go find her shoes. Brilliant.

Whether she is actually saying words or signing or speaking Spanish [soon...] or none of the above, it's usually pretty easy to know what she wants. She babbles constantly and asks all sorts of questions. I never understood how moms knew what the nonsense coming out of their child's mouth was, but now I totally get it. If we don't get it right away, she will grab our fingers and drag us across the house to what she wants to talk to us about, the bathtub, the Christmas tree, the piano, the snacks, etc. While I was sitting on the floor and not wanting to get her food out of the fridge, which I knew is what she wanted, and would not budge when she was pulling on my hand, she tried to slide her fingers under my backside trying to pick me up to get me moving. Silly girl.

We're also working on learning body parts. She can usually point out her nose, eyes, hair, belly button, and bum and she sometimes gets her eyes, fingers, and toes.

She is also very into the arts. She has recently picked up the skill of coloring. She loves loves loves to color with crayons and pens. She also loves to play my trombone with me. I have it out in our living room next to the piano and she goes and stands next to it pointing to the mouth piece and babbling until I come over and help her play it. She puts the mouthpiece to her mouth and sings through it. Seriously so cute. It's pretty amazing that she has learned not to ever touch the trombone with out Mommy's help. She is also continuing to grow into quite the accomplished little lady by keeping up with her singing and piano practicing. She loves to do both, and she loves to do both at the same time. Her dancing skills are also improving everyday. She loves swaying back and forth and bouncing. She has also tried to snap her fingers after seeing Sean and I do it while grooving out to Michael Jackson in the car the other day.

She can also read. She can sit by herself and just read for a long long time. Sometimes when she doesn't want to nap she still gets quiet time which means a pacifier and lots of books in her crib. She can stay in there upwards of an hour just reading. She points to all the pictures and asks lots of questions and narrates it in all of her babbles. She and I also read a lot together and she loves to pet the doggies on the page or pretend to eat the banana or give the baby a beso/kiss. She loves books and has never ripped her paper books. Amazing.

Her favorite toys are her dolls, her blocks, her little dinosaur, her big dinosaur that she rides and plays music,  her blocks, her new puppets that she got for Christmas, and every stuffed animal.

She has quite the little personality. She is so so so funny. She is the funniest person I know, true story. No one has made me laugh harder than this little munchkin. She is such a tease, such a flirt, such a quirky sense of humor. She teases us, makes jokes, sneaks up on us, tickles us. Seriously hilarious. Also, she makes the silliest little scrunched up face when she does her cheeser smile. She's quite the little firecracker. She is very stubborn, persistent, and independent.

In the last three months she has moved to size 18 mo clothing, size 5 shoes, and size 4 diaper.

The doctor again said that she was absolutely perfect in every way and said that my friends probably don't like me for having a perfect baby. He probably was just making me feel good, but I do think she is pretty perfect. She obviously has her moments like everyone does, but she's pretty splendid.

She is now 32.75 inches - thats 2 inches in 3 months, people! Growth spurt! No wonder she eats so much! That puts in her in 97% for height. Her weight is 24 lbs - 75% [ she actually got to stand on the big person scale and not the little baby one! Big girl] and her head is 46.4 cm [70%]. Perfect in every way.

She makes my heart sing.