M at 16 months

Yet again, 2 months have passed. During these last months, we spent 3 weeks on holiday in Estonia. You can read about our travel experiences here. What else has happened?

Important events and developmental milestones

These have yet again been big months for the little M.

• She has started to walk independently. 2 months ago she was pulling herself up and walked with her little vehicles but over the holidays, she started taking 2-8 steps on her own and walking when holding on to your hand. Last couple of days, she has started to walk real little distances on her own.

• M is saying more words! Now she says "Aitäh" (thank you in Estonian), "ass" (for "kass", cat in Estonian), "aua" (for a dog in Estonian), "ai" (for "pai", a stroke in Estonian; the cats have taken a liking in her now!) and "daddy" or "dada". We haven't heard any Dutch words yet.

• She understands language better and better. She understands all simple commands in Estonian, like stand up, come, try, lets put your shoe on etc. She wants to cooperate and help, mostly. I think she understands English well too but I don't speak it with her.

• We have started with potty training (actually around her 1 year birthday) but it is going better on one day than another.

• M is very much into moving right now. Apart from that, she still likes all the games where she puts anything into anything, stacks circles on a stick. She has also started taking a big liking to cars. She makes a sound like "brrrbrrbrr" when moving a car.

• Her favourite books are the ones with flaps and moving parts. She very much likes books from this series that we bought from Estonia.

• M has gone over to one nap per day. Very comfortably, the last week of the holiday, she refused to go to sleep for the second time (at 14) and stayed up from 11 to 19. As you can imagine, this was not the ideal situation. Therefore, from the next day, we started to stretch the first awake time from 10 to 11 and then to 12. It took her a couple of days to get used to it, but now she is doing really good on that one nap. At first, she only slept for an hour but now is thankfully sleeping for about 2 hours.

The new schedule

6:30/7 wake-up, potty, new diaper, new clothes

7:15 breakfast (porridge)

(8:00 daycare time)

10:00 snack (e.g. fruit), potty

11:30 lunch (or if she is too tired to eat well, she has her lunch after the nap): bread with toppings and a fruit

12:00-14:00 nap

14:00 potty, lunch if she didn't eat enough

15:30 snack (e.g. yoghurt), potty

(17:15 home from daycare!)

17:30 dinner (some carbs, like pasta or potatoes, some protein, veggies, followed by a fruit and possibly, leftover porridge and/or yoghurt)

19:00 good night!

Eating

M is eating on her own with a spoon now. Something that my parents taught her and means that we can eat when she eats too, so we are very thankful! She tries to use a fork, but this is still difficult.

She was completely weaned from breastmilk when she was just under 15 months. I found that we did very well after all the challenges we faced.

M eats almost anything, but she doesn't like things with a strong taste, such as hummus. She eats vegetarian at home and at daycare but she has tried some meat and fish in Estonia (wasn't much of a fan). Her favourite foods are still pasta, all the berries and at home, waffles and fruit (she loves apples, pears, bananas and the most, kiwis, but she doesn't like mango).

Challenges

• Dealing with my own expectations and hopes for myself. I constantly feel things like she should be walking on her own faster, she should be speaking better etc. Mom guilt is real, especially on the days I see her very little during the week.

• Discipline. I think we are rather strict compared to some parents we know. From us, she needs to learn that some things are not allowed and she still tests that out sometimes. If she doesn't get what she wants, she turns into jelly and lies on the ground, screaming. This is a lot to take!

• She recently recieved a (possible/likely) diagnosis of bronchial hyperreactivity, meaning that her airways might be more sensitive to things like a (viral) infection, dust, smoke, changes in the weather, mist etc. I had thought that this might be the case for a while as she kept coughing without an illness really. We are using salbutamol inhalator on her. Together with a little bit of eczema she has been having, we have 2 out of 3 elements of atopy. I really didn't think our child would have any of it and I sincerely hope she grows out of it.

See you again in 2 months!