LA-Stitch: Nora - 16 months

Well, I figured it's time for a toddler update since Nora will be 16 months on Sunday! Nora has changed so much between her first birthday and now! She is practically running, feeding herself with a fork and spoon, and talking up a storm. We've stopped teaching her signs because she's repeating many words now and can communicate with us her basic needs (eat, more, please, thank you, diaper, and all done). Her verbal words include: mommy, dada, down, uh-uh-uh (up), ni ni (night night), dicka dicka (tickle), nana (banana), ookee (cookie), eye, eeze (cheese and please), bebe (baby), okay, dye dye (bye), hiiiii, and no! She has two forms of "no" - NO when she doesn't want to do something and no-no in a sweet voice when she's just affirming that she knows she isn't supposed to do something. She also repeats a lot of words but doesn't say them on her own yet. She can identify a few body parts: nose, eyes, mouth, tongue, hair, toes, leg, and her favorite - bellybutton or "lalalala." She knows a few animal sounds (kitty cat, lion, cow, dog) but seems to have forgotten what a duck says after about 5 months of quacking!

Her current favorites are playing with her babies, getting a free cookie at the grocery store, bath time, reading ALL of her books, building really tall single block towers, making sure any open doors are closed, and playing outside when the weather is nice. Her favorite shows are Daniel Tiger and Curious George. She literally squeals with delight when we turn one of them on.

She's officially made the transition to one 2 hour nap after lunch, with the exception of falling asleep in the car some days. It took about a month of struggling with nap time daily to get into a new schedule though. Most days she would talk/fuss in her crib for 2 hours in the morning and other times she would be really tired and take two full naps. She is consistently sleeping from 7pm - nearly 7am, sometimes with a random wake-up in the middle of the night. We stopped nursing right around 13 months, which thankfully was a very smooth transition for both her and I. So now, we let her cry for 5-10 minutes since she often goes back to sleep on her own. If she doesn't, one of us goes in to check on her, comfort her, tell her night night again, and put her back down.

Nora continues to be an awesome eater. Yogurt is one of her current favorites (she eats an entire single portion of Chobani greek yogurt!). Actually, she loves anything messy she can feed herself with a spoon, i.e. applesauce, soup, you get the picture ;). One of her new favorite things is dipping foods. She'll dip anything and everything - she even likes mustard.

Teeth brushing has become a major challenge. Because she is exercising her independence so much, it is a huge struggle to brush her teeth every day! Nora gets to finish brushing, but only after mommy or daddy brush first. She has 12 teeth now (8 total in the front and 4 molars). I think her incisors will cut through soon. We've decided to adopt the "Nora gets to finish" strategy with FaceTime also, otherwise we end up with tantrums and 10 call backs because someone likes to push the big red button before it's time to say goodbye :).

Photos are still a challenge because she is so active, but we've managed to get a few good shots in the past couple of weeks!