The Hoosier Homestead Family: Meghan @ 16 Months

Fine Motor:

She continues to love pegging toys. Even ones of more complexity.
She loves nesting her cups.
She enjoyed picking up sand with her hands and trying to put it in her bucket.
She explores water movement with a cup in the bathtub.
She easily turns pages in paper books as well as board books. She still can't have them unsupervised as ripping them is also fun :)

Gross Motor:

She walks everywhere consistently now!
She is getting very close to running - we figured she would do that pretty quickly after starting to walk consistently.
She is developing quite a throwing arm. She works on it a lot while throwing her cloth wipes into the dryer.
She can kick a ball while walking.
She loves to "run away" from us.

Language:

Words (45): bwoo (blueberry), apple, spoon, nap, bird, poop, shoe, cup, bow (hairbow), boots, barn, clap, cheese, help, down, milk, mouth, ear, room

Previously: ah (all done), baba (Dad), baby, ball, balloon, boo, book, bottle, bug, bye-bye, eat, hat, hi, mom/mama, more, oatmeal, papa (popcorn), please, prune, sock, teeth, that, uh-oh, wow, yay, yum

Previously: dog, cow, rabbit, duck, sheep, horse, cat, "vmmm" for cars, "mmm" while eating

Previously: all done, more, milk, hat, no, yes, eat, diaper, wash, phone, please, thank you, hot, cold, help, water, shoes, socks, up, book, bird, sleep/nap, dog

She signs please and then points to what she wants.
Her receptive language is increasing like crazy - when you say a word that she knows, she will look to/for the object. Example: ask her if she wants the fan on and she will look at and point to the fan.
If she's getting frustrated by the length of a car ride she is easily distracted by asking her to make the sounds of various animals.

Eating:

She has completely given up the baby bottle!
She has started using a fork to eat. The night I introduced it, she ate 5 chicken nuggets just to get to keep using it!
She enjoys using her trainer open cup to drink water.
She generally eats very well. When she is teething she eats less, prefers pureed foods, and loves gnawing on frozen veggies.
She LOVES eating food right out of the gardens!
Her weight has continued making significant drops off of her growth curve. After all of her feeding issues as a baby, she stabilized around the 40th percentile. Her last two appointments have had significant drops - she's now in the 13th percentile. Her height also dropped percentiles in that time frame - she's still quite tall, but not following the curve she had been on. If she doesn't begin to come back up or drops even further she will most likely have some testing done just to be sure she doesn't have some sort of metabolic disorder, hormonal disorder, or something else medically that could be impacting her growth. Or, she may just be a skinny little thing!
To help ensure she is getting enough calories each day, she now drinks milk mixed with heavy cream! In one cup of milk (3/4 c. milk + 1/4 c. cream) there is an additional 140 calories!

Sleeping:

She rarely takes a morning nap. She wants to lay down for it though! She will request it if you "forget."
She takes a good afternoon nap most days for 2-4 hours.
She generally sleeps from 7:00/7:30 pm to 6:30/7:00 am.
She does not want rocked before going to sleep anymore - I think this is mostly because she's so long and can't get comfortable.
She now coaches me through her pre-sleep routine. She points at each thing saying "that" as if I'm going to forget the order we have been doing these tasks for months :)

Other Updates:

She has eight teeth and is working on her molars now. Her last two teeth had only been through for a week and the molars started. Poor girl!
She is in love with corners. There is one in her playroom that she loves to play in and one in her room where she will carry toys to play with during roomtime!
She loves bath - just saying the word is sure to get her to walk quickly towards the stairs. The entire time you draw the bath she will repeat "bath, bath, bath, bath."
She enjoys having lotion put on after a bath. For a while it annoyed her, but she loves it now.
She loves helping with whatever "chore" Mama is doing - she sweeps, plays with the vacuum, helps with the laundry, etc. Whatever I am doing she will try to do.
She loves glitz and glam. Favorites this month are: bibs as capes, a purple tutu, pink sequin boots, bracelets, and her purse!

The Hoosier Homestead Family