18 Months (Isla's half birthday!)

Happy Half Birthday to Isla! We had a combined birthday/half birthday celebration with my family on February 12th where Isla got to enjoy her very first ice cream (AND oreos, AND caramel sauce, AND hot fudge....it was an ice cream cake!)

Isla now is sporting FOUR teeth! I found two more in there on February 7th, the two upper canines. So she has the 2 lower middle and then the 2 upper canines. I'm just hoping the upper middle come in soon so it doesn't look like she has fangs!!! She sure is an odd teether but we love her anyway. I'm just glad that the night wakings have (mostly) disappeared.

Isla has taken to cleaning this month. If she can get her hands on a wipe, we'll often spot her dusting the coffee table or wiping down various other pieces of furniture. We've been letting her have little bits of water in an open cup around the house and if ever she spills it, she runs to the kitchen, grabs and towel and returns to mop it up. I couldn't be more proud! :)

She also is really into closing doors and will frequently close the baby gate for us (we never have to because she always does) or she'll close open closet doors or cupboards. The only trouble with this is that lately she likes to have alone time in the downstairs bathroom. She'll go in there (with the lights off) and swing the door so it is open just a crack. Who knows what she does in there (I think she usually investigates whether there are any clothes in the wash) but occasionally she'll accidentally close herself all the way in there...

Isla's vocabulary continues to grow and grow. I can't seem to keep up with all her new words anymore. Off the top of my head, some of them include: rock-rock (said while pushing the rocking chair or swing), shoe, more, belly, color, tee (tv-usually said while holding remote and pointing it at the tv), apple, carrot, light, side (outside), sorry, owl, please, Lani, Scott, Eli, Ben and Gideon.

She even said a couple of phrases this month! We were eating dinner one night when, unprovoked, she said "More please." Then the other day I went to pick her up from my sister's and when she saw me at the door, she turned to my sister and said "Bye bye Lani!"

Isla has turned into quite the little dancer. She lots to bop her head whenever she hears music and usually exclaims "Uh oh!!" whenever the music stops. It seems as though the girl even has rhythm (which is a total answer to prayer as I wouldn't want her to dance anything like her mother...)

Isla also has this strange fascination with lying in the middle of the tile kitchen floor.

Drumroll please....discipline has begun in the Crozier household! We initiated timeouts shortly after my post on discipline and we are hopeful that they are beginning to work (????) We chose a special place along our big red living room wall to be the "time out wall." At first we had to sit Isla there and then sit right in front of her with our backs turned to keep her there. We would have to sit her back down numerous times before she would finally stay put. But I'm happy to report that it only took a couple days of doing that before she would sit and stay there, unsupervised until we told her that her time out was done. Usually she misbehaves and we say "Uh oh, that's so sad. You're going to have to have a time out" (Love and Logic). Then she sits against "the wall" and we set the timer for 1 minute. When it beeps, she'll start saying "Beep, beep, beep" too and then we go get her, tell her why she had a time out, she says sorry, we give hugs and kisses and then usually she has to go back to the kitchen to pick up the food/utensils etc that she threw on the floor (since this is the main reason she gets time outs so far). For a while there, every meal was ending in a time out but we may now be down to one meal/day that ends in a time out so I guess that's progress! But then the other day she was a complete angel during her meal and didn't throw anything. I cleaned her up and got her out of the highchair and she still went and sat herself down at the time out wall!!! I think she might think it's her meal routine now... Or there have been a couple times where I said the word time out in casual conversation and then I realized she heard me and went and sat down against the wall.

I'm not sure where she got it but Isla likes to respond to most questions by saying "Uh huh" or "Ummhmmmm." "Isla, do you want a snack?" "Uh huh." Isla, are you all done?" "Ummmhmmm." She's also really into nodding and will often nod her head to answer you.

Alas, she also picked up shaking her head and sayingt "no no no no no no" sometime last week. I tried really hard to keep her from learned the word "N-O" but we must have slipped...The great par about it (so far!) is that she isn't saying it in defiance but usually is just communicating when she really doesn't want something. I think it's sorta cute because she strings the "no"s together really fast and says them in a super sweet voice.

Isla seems to love being the center of attention. She is shy and clingy (to me mostly) at random but then becomes wild and crazy once she is comfortable. She is quite the little show-off when we have people over, running around, making silly sounds and spinning around in circles to make herself dizzy. She also started doing these fake falls where she will step up on something--usually a toy or box (or laptop if we're not careful!!!)--and then dramatically fall off and sprawl herself across the floor. Then she giggles and laughs and does it all over. What a goof! I've come to realize that clothes inhibit her. Strip her down to her diaper and she goes extra crazy! Graham and I often look at her and wonder "Where on earth did you come from!?" as neither of us are really the super, energetic, life-of-the-party types.

Isla is starting to be able to identify body parts. She can find her nose, mouth, teeth, ears, eyes, belly, neck, hair, feet/toes and hands (most of the time). It's fun to quiz her and watch her mind work!

 

As I mentioned in a prior post, we have finally completed our transition to one nap a day! Graham successfully figured out the perfect routine when he watched her while I'll worked the weekend. Now she is taking 2-4 hour mid-day naps in place of the former AM and afternoon naps.

Isla's favorite foods right now are PASTA, yogurt, oranges and grapefruit, cheese, milk and bread. Broccoli is one of the few veggies she'll eat all on her own but she also has been eating some cooked carrots and frozen peas. I try to mix veggies into her pasta dishes but she's gotten pretty good at picking them out and eating only the pasta. I even add chopped, shredded carrot to her quesadillas sometimes since she doesn't like eating plain vegetables. We've started telling her that she can have more of whatever she wants (usually pasta!) only after she eats a bite or two of whatever the offending food is on her tray. It's working for the most part but she sure can be stubborn sometimes (it's a good thing I am too but sometimes it's hard to hold my ground!)