M at 14 months

Our little girl is not a baby anymore! I've decided to write about her milestones every 2 months for now, and talk more about the challenges we are facing at the moment as well.

Important events and developments

- M is pulling herself up to standing on everything and she can stand up without support sometimes. She walks when we hold one of her hands.

- She can climb on the couch, climb on her learning stool and reach everything (she should not reach).

- She can climb on her little vehicles and ride around with them.

- She says "aitäh" (thank you in Estonian) and "kiki/kiss" (about the cat) sometimes and "daddy". For the rest, she just keeps babbling!

- She is weaned from formula (she gets regular milk now) and is using the bottle (she uses a straw bottle and a plastic cup now).

- Her favourite toy is a stacking toy with a peg in the middle and a bunch of colorful rings.

- She likes to help with taking the dishes out of the dishwasher and laundy out of the washing machine.

- She understands little sentences and commands ("M is going to bed", "Come", "Wait", "Where is the kitty?" etc in Estonian).

- We have started going to the petting zoo and the playing ground around it very frequently and she loves it.

Eating

M still gets breast milk in the morning. Because of my schedule getting a bit crazier, I was thinking of weaning her from that but ended up not doing it. Apart from that, she eats porridge and fruit in the morning, a snack (fruit, cracker, yogurt) twice a day, either bread or warm food for lunch and some warm food for dinner. She loves pasta, especially ravioli, sweet potatoes, some meat substitutes, paprika, sometimes roasted potatoes. Her favorite fruit is the kiwi and strawberries. She gets the dinner we have 90% of the time (she does have a hard time waiting!).

Challenges

- Weaning the pacifier - we have tried it for 2 weekends and it has not gone well at all...

- Bouts of crying coming out of nowhere...

- How strict should you be? It is hard to find that perfect balance.

- Running with her has been hard because she doesn't sleep so well in the stroller anymore but when you go at the end of her awake time, she can fall asleep when you don't want it. I feel that I´m missing that activity with her so I need to make that happen on the weekend.

- Potty training - it goes well on a weekend day when I really work on it, but during the week we fall back again. She can be too tired and too moody to sit on the potty and it is hard to find the perfect timing and to entertain her well.

- It is hard to be away from her from 6:45 to 17:30 during the week. So much mom guilt happening...

- At the moment she has 4 teeth coming at the same time, so that is putting all of us through quite something.