Monaloca

Life is certainly busy these days, for us working adults but also for our burgeoning toddler. Melina constantly finds things to try out and places to explore. She can’t even get through one story book without heading to the shelf to pick out another. In little snippets, here’s what she’s up to. Happy 14 months, Jelly Bean!

Explore: Meli’s favorite activity is to destroy our house. She’s pretty good about sticking to the “in-bounds” areas (drawers, baskets, and bookshelves that are safe for her… granted this is most our house). But she’ll pull these areas apart within five minutes of entering a room.

She’s super curious about how things work, and very interested in putting things back together: The lid on her sippy cup, her sippy cup back on the coaster, her shoes on her feet, her hair clip that she pulled off back on her head… you get the picture. She has varying degrees of success depending on the task. Amazingly, she’s pretty persistent and doesn’t seem to get frustrated too easily unless she’s tired.

She’s walking very quickly now. Last week at the park she nearly broke into a run to chase after some dogs. Since she hasn’t yet figured out the running thing it was just a very quick waddle, and (at least to her mama) adorable.

“Talk”: She’s talking up a storm and trying to refine her babble. Banana – her new favorite food – is now either “abana” or just “b” The dog doesn’t say “woof,” he says “f,” and the cow says “mmmm.” She shakes her head “no” quite frequently, sometimes when she means yes. The real “no” is obvious, though. It includes a hand gesture brushing the air (or object) away.

Eat/Drink: Our “good eater” still hates milk with a passion. It’s the one thing she never fails to push away firmly. And by milk I mean all kinds but mama’s: cow, soy, rice, even chocolate. For some reason she does tolerate it in cereal, so I’m hopeful she’ll come around to drinking it one day. She’s not a huge fan of chocolate, period. Hmmm. Is she really our child?

Sleep: Unlike her half-brother, Melina is not a morning person. She usually wakes up cranky around 6am, and either fusses back to sleep or I nurse her and she goes back down without a fuss. Then she’ll often sleep til 9 or even 10 – if we let her- and this time wakes up happy but a little groggy. Guess she’s our kid after all!

Play: Meli loves water and was really bummed when she couldn’t get into the pool with Kai at a recent swim lesson. She also loves balls and her blankie and likes to play with crayons and paper. Sometimes she draws a real line or two. I bought her some big-grip toddler markers (albeit for 18+ months) at Target last week. I was super excited and she seemed so too, but didn’t quite understand they had to be facing a certain way for the ink to touch the paper. All three markers landed on the floor within five minutes.

In final 14-month news, we just found out Melina is graduating to the Toddler table at daycare. (Same room, but more activities like walks in the courtyard.) Her tenure with the Waddlers passed so quickly, but apparently she’s walking and self-feeding well enough to move on over – and according to her favorite teacher, a bit earlier than normal. Yay, Jelly Bean!

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