14 Months

After Adalyn turned a year, I decided not to do monthly recaps. Well, it's only been 2 months since her birthday and there have been so many changes in these two months that I thought I should go ahead and do an update. I'm going to throw in a couple pictures. I've noticed that the number of pictures I take of Adalyn has severely decreased because she is such a moving target. I can never get her to pose for pictures or slow down enough to have a clear picture. I took these pictures the other night when she was playing with her daddy and was so giggly.

The biggest difference right now is that Adalyn is walking all of the time! On Thanksgiving Adalyn took her first step, but she never seemed interested in walking any more than that. The week before Christmas, Adalyn's sitter texted me to tell me that she took 12 steps across the room!  She went from not walking at all, to serious walking. Not just a step or two, but across the room!! When I went to pick Adalyn up that day she told me that she just assumed that Adalyn had been taking a few steps at home and I just hadn't told her about it. But the thing is, Adalyn hadn't been taking steps at all until then! Then in the 3 days we were at my parents house, I realized that Adalyn wasn't crawling anymore. She was walking everywhere! When Adalyn went back to the sitter after the new year, she couldn't believe that Adalyn was now a walker. In just those two weeks she had become a big girl!!  She's barely crawling anymore so she is officially a toddler! And she is FAST!

Adalyn's little personality just keeps coming out every day. She is so much fun. She communicates quite well.  (Which helps her to not do the melt down fussing out of frustration.) She does do sign language for milk, more, please and all done.  She's actually quite accurate...like when she signs "all done" in her high chair, she really is finished eating. I love when she signs "please" for something. So cute. I tried to teach her the sign for "thank you", but she actually has her only little language for "thank you" so she just says it and I absolutely love it! It's kinda like "tee-tee".

She loves stretching her arms up so she will be picked up.  On New Years Eve she was cracking me up, because it didn't matter who she was standing next to, she wanted to be picked up. I'm pretty sure during the evening she asked every single person at our house to pick her up at some point. It melts your heart... And if you're sitting in a chair and she wants up on your lap, she'll put her arms up and then will say "ah" as in "up".

Once you pick her up, she points to where she wants to go and says "dat" (that) about anything she's pointing to. The other day she pointed to the fridge so I walked there and she grabbed the handle. I opened it and she pointed to her milk and did "please" and "milk" in sign language. Melt.my.heart.

For Christmas we gave Adalyn a leapfrog cell phone toy and it is precious to see her put it up to her ear and say "ya-yo" (hello). She'll walk around with any toy near the size of a phone up to her ear. Jonathan says she sees her mom spend too much time with a phone to her ear:) She's learning to play so well with her toys. She doesn't just throw pieces of toys everywhere now. (Well she still does sometimes.) But she is learning to roll her firetruck on it's wheels and stack her little stacking toys. She "pretends" to eat the food in her picnic basket and then wants to share with whoever is playing with her.

She's really into giving kisses. Sometimes she'll blow kisses, but mostly she just puckers up and leans in. She likes to give kisses on the lips. I know some babies like to do the open  mouth kiss and she used to do that, but now she's a pucker-upper. And sometimes she even makes a kissy noise or says "umwha." She's extra kissy in the morning when she wakes up. She just covers us in kisses. Today when I picked her up from the sitter, I picked her up and she kept wanting to give me kisses. It was so precious!! 

There are so many other stories about things she does, but I've got to cut myself off. One last thing: She loves to tap her hand on our back when she hugs and loves on us. oh my.

I look at these past 14 months and still am in awe of how fast she's grown up. My baby is a toddler and is just soaking up life! I can't get enough of her!!! We are blessed!