Run and Squeak and Squawk with the Animals

I'll be honest. After the heady milestone monitoring days of the first year of LG's life, I'm a little burnt out on worrying about whether she's sitting/crawling/walking/talking according to a particular schedule. Now, this may sound like the kind of thing that someone whose child isn't meeting those milestones might say. But truth be told, I'm at the point where I don't really think about it much anymore.

Instead, I find myself thinking the following: Is she struggling with anything day-to-day? Does she learn something new every week? Is she having fun?

As long as I have a satisfactory answer to those questions (and the doctor doesn't tell me to worry about something), I'm just going to go with the flow.

And the flow over the last few weeks has been all about animal noises. It probably started some time close to when we visited the zoo and she walked through the reptile house going "HssssssHssssss." A day or so latter, Hollie was driving her somewhere, singing Old MacDonald, and when she got to ducks, LG started shouting "kack kack kack" (give her a break! 'Q's are hard.)

Since then, her animal vocabulary has grown daily. Will she say "doggy"? Nope. But she'll say "uf uf uf" when you mention dogs. Bring out her favorite owl, and all you'll hear for the next five minutes is "hooooooohoooooo."

These Melissa & Doug puzzles may have helped somewhat, although, to be perfectly honest, most of the animals sound like they're talking over a bad drive-thru speaker.

 

Despite that, she will "moo," occasionally "meow," and very proudly and loudly "BAAAAA!" whenever she sees a sheep. Seriously, a couple of her books have sheep in them, and she'll stop you from reading, grab the book and shout "BAAAA!" You just have to wait until she's done.

And if she doesn't know the sound it makes, it quacks.

She loves the monkey noise, which sounds a lot like an owl, but much gruffer. And she's pretty good at the elephant, pressing her lips close together and blowing like a trumpet.

Excuse the messy shirt. I just had pasta with red sauce.

I really wish I could get some video of this, but I've got to be sneaky. As soon as she sees the camera, she becomes single-mindedly focused on running away with it, and she usually wins.

Belated 12 Months: State of the Baby

Hollie took LG to the doctor for her one-year checkup almost two weeks ago. It was a bit of a rough week, since it was also the first time LG has gotten sick. We've gotten super lucky on that front, but that doesn't mean dealing with everything that comes with a sick child is any fun, regardless of how infrequently it's happened.

So she weighed in at 19 lbs., 10 oz., only 9 oz. more than her 9-month visit. However, I blame the small gain on the fact the aforementioned sickness. Four days of being sick will drop your weight no matter how much Pedialyte you drink. If I had to guess, I'd say her weight should've been closer to 20 lbs. Something like 19 lbs., 15 oz.

Her height (which we can officially call it, since she spends more time upright than prone) came in at 29 3/4 inches, although, again I think that was a little off. Every time I watch the nurses measure her, they just don't get the yardstick in the right position. I'm pretty sure she's over 30 inches.

In any case, aside from the stomach bug she was dealing with (which had almost run its course by the time she went to the doctor), she was just fine for a one-year old.

As for the recovering sicky, there are two things worth noting.

Thing the first: LG isn't a very snuggly kid. She likes to move around. She never stops moving around. When you get a hug, it's a quick squeeze, then she's off to the next thing. But when she got sick, all she wanted to do was sit quietly and be held. Other symptoms (gross, gross symptoms) aside, that's how we knew she really wasn't feeling well.

This was actually a few days after the sickness had passed, and she still just wanted to be held from time to time.

Which leads me to Thing the second: Since she's been sick, she's been super needy. She doesn't like it when we leave the room she's in, even for just a few seconds. She cries a bit more before it's time for bed, like she doesn't want to be alone. It's like she's constantly afraid we're not coming back. I know it's silly to psychoanalyze a 12-month-old kid (even if I were qualified to do so), but it seems to me that being sick finally made her feel a little vulnerable. Even now that she's feeling better, she still feels a bit of that vulnerability, and she wants us nearby all the time. It's the sort of thing that breaks your heart a little.

That said, I'm pretty sure it's just a phase (I hope so, anyway), and we'll get through it like anything else. In the mean time, the season agrees with her. She looks adorable in Halloween outfits, and as it turns out, she really, really likes pumpkins.