Walking with the Cooks: Happy 18 months, Lydia!

Our littlest is a delight and continues to be the darling of her siblings. They dote on her and care for her in the sweetest way. We still call her Baby, but it is becoming less and less true. She continues to work her eyebrows when she is unsure about new people or a new activity, but warms up much more quickly and is delighted by silly game play. On her own terms, she likes to dance, sing, and be the center of attention. Maybe she will be our extravert!

Weight: 31 lbs 10 oz (99th%)
Height: 32.75 in (76th%)
Head: 47.5 cm (80th%)

Diapers: size 5, began potty training!
Clothing: 18 (if it is stretchy) and 24 month, 2T (chunky thighs dictate pant size)

Likes: wrestling with Dad, being outside, bananas, books, songs with motions, eyebrow conversations, pretending to do things the big kids do (wash her own hair, wipe on the potty), playing catch

Dislikes: not getting the toy she wants, 9:30 at night (wakes up and cries most nights and has mostly learned to sooth herself back to sleep)

Schedule:
6:30-7am Awake for the day!
9:00-11am In her crib for "nap"
1:00-3pm Nap (the real deal)
7pm Down for bed

Sleep: Lydia is at the same time a deep sleeper and frequent waker. She loves getting away from the fray at 7pm and having her snippet of alone time. She sleeps soundly, but has continued to go through wakeful phases over the past three months. Part of that is that she struggled with an ear infection a month over the winter and each time had a runny nose and new teeth to go along with it. Painful! Just as things were getting back to normal and Dave and I would start to feel human again, she would get another ear infection! Those days are past us (at the moment!) and she is doing much better. She often wakes right around the time we go to bed, but has learned to settle herself back down. Some days she wakes up around 6am and is content to talk and roll happily in her crib until 7am. Big news is that she dropped her first nap cold turkey. She just didn't go to sleep a few mornings, then we were out running errands a few mornings, and when we thought she would be pooped and most need a nap, she didn't take it. She hasn't looked back! I still put her down, because her morning nap is when I do school with Sarah. Hopefully I will be able to milk it until the end of the school year!!!

Physically: As I look back over the pictures in the previous monthly update post, I always think to myself, "wow, she used to be BALD, but look how much hair she has now." Next month, same thing. It is true for this update as well, and I am sure at 21 months I will say the same thing! We can clip a little bow in it now and the baby mullet is less noticeable. It has a nice little curl to it after her bath on her neck and around her ears. She isn't losing any baby weight and still has thighs to be reckoned with. I let her try on a pair of Sarah's too small 5T shorts and they fit her thick little lower body nicely.

Food: She continues to be a good eater and loves fruit. The grand exception is strawberries, which she has never liked. Strange, right?! Her other quirk is that she opens any sandwich I give her. It has become a bit of a messy habit, I think. She drinks lots of milk, but isn't the guzzler that her brother and sister were. Lydia loves hanging onto an apple while we walk or grocery shop and has been known to eat the whole thing, seeds and all, before we noticed. Lots of new teeth have made it easier for her to chew veggies.

Communication: Our late talker is saying plenty now and communicates quite well. I feel like we have developed a pretty good system for a our normal routines. She knows and remembers when I expect please (which she says with her hands and mouth), says "chair" when she is ready to eat, shakes her head for "no", and says the cutest "yeah" you have ever heard when we guess what she wants correctly.

Potty training: Crazy, right? I thought so. She has always loved to keep us company in the bathroom and we happened upon one of our little potties in storage, so we brought it to the apartment and put it in the bathroom. She quickly learned the joy of the routine of opening the lid, sitting for a minute, getting a square of paper and reaching behind to wipe, then tossing it in the trash and closing her seat. She was so proud! She did this for several weeks while Dave and I thought surely not, surely she is not ready. Well, we happened upon the perfect week for potty training- warm (good for being in just a t-shirt and under drawers) and rainy (so we weren't going to be going out anyway)- and it was before the craziness of moving and having a baby. So I decided to give it three days of good effort and then we would make a decision. We committed Wednesday to Friday. Saturday she definitely wasn't trained, but was doing well, so we kept it up and said we would think about it again in a few days. Well, it has been more than two weeks now and she is still improving and doing quite well. She is mostly accident free, more based on our putting her on the potty at strategic times than her knowing she needs to go, and has dry diapers often after trips out. We are going to keep going for now, while still using diapers anytime we wouldn't want to clean up an accidents- that means diaper free when we are at home and she isn't sleeping! We'll see how things evolve :)

Fun things:
- One of the first words she added when she started talking more was "baby." Nothing delights her more than walking through the diaper isle, which has a baby on every box!
- Less than a fun thing, but we had our first trip to the emergency room with one of our kids this quarter. A couple of days after starting antibiotics for one of her ear infections (which she got the first week of December, first week of January, and first week of February) she woke up around the time we were going to bed, which was kind of normal. But this time, she didn't settle down. When Dave picked her up she coughed so hard and long it sounded like she was throwing up. I got up to help him clean up, but it turned out she just couldn't catch her breath. She didn't want to swallow (or take a pacy) and we were worried she had an infection in her throat or swelling. So we called the doctor's office and talked to a nurse. She listened to Lydia breath over speaker phone for about 15 minutes and ultimately said, "you don't need to call an ambulance, but you do need to bring her to the ER and have her seen." Yikes! This was about 11:30pm. We quickly regrouped and Dave took her in. They did an Xray to check her lungs and kept an eye on her oxygen levels and declared her to just be stuffy. The doctor suggested a humidifier make her sound better and help us worry less. They made it home around 2am and she hasn't had an ear infection since!
- Since we moved Lydia has been sleeping in the pack n' play in her room and the crib was set up in the big kids rooms, a left over from our dreams of having them all sleep together. Turns out she didn't sleep well enough for that! Well we finally decided to give her the real crib back (it became the obvious choice when she started playing under the pack n' play mat) and she loves the space and the bounce.
- Lydia's hair is a light brown color, which means that all the kids have their own color. I wonder how BC4 will fit in!
- Sarah made Lydia a picture with her name on it and hung it over the changing table. We read it a few times saying L-Y-D-I-A. Lydia loves to look at it and repeat the rhythm, da-doo-dee-da-A! She always ends with a very happy A :)
- After taking a Christmas picture against the wall in our home, anytime she sensed we were using our phones to take a picture, she would stop what she was doing and run to stand against the wall and smile. We missed many a good picture to this sweet habit! She has just stopped running every time and has added a cheesy grin to her funny picture routine.
- She has developed an angry streak and very purposely acts on it. This includes sometimes includes screaming, throwing, and hitting. And that means discipline has also begun, but she acts so deliberately that it is almost cute. We'll see how this part of her character develops!