20 months

My Isa baby is a full fledged toddler now.

The other day she met a woman who said, "Wow, she's quite petite, isn't she? I mean, you and Patrick are quite tall, so it's strange how petite she is."

Patrick and I looked at each other. Is she looking at the same child? Isa's been above the 90th percentile for every body measurement since she's been born. What was this woman thinking? Well, we think because Isa walks and talks like a child much older than she is, this woman was confused by her age. To her, Isa acts like a much older person in a tiny person's body. In a way, this woman was right. This was the best characterization anyone has come up with about Isa: she is like a tiny, two and a half foot tall, fully-fledged person.

She speaks in full sentences. Last month, she learned the whole ABC's song, and I never even taught it to her. I'm assuming she picked it up from Sesame Street. But there we were one day. Isa is sitting in the shopping cart at Aldi and she sings the whole ABC song, right down to "next time won't you sing with me." And I'm looking around the store like, "does anyone else see this kid? Whose kid is this? Who taught you the ABC's!?! Answer me!" :)

She counts to 14 (because after 14, every number is 14 until she gets to 20). She counted to ten in Spanish at 18 months! Who are you, sorceress? What have you done with my normally-developing toddler?

I remember reading a while back that growth hormones get secreted while the baby sleeps. Since I read that I swear she wakes up some days noticeably bigger and more capable. She just woke up one day and said, "I want to see an egg." So I showed her an egg from the fridge. She tells me, "Please cook it. I'm hungry." She doesn't do a lot of this caveman speak that is common for her age: cook-egg-I-hungry. No, with Isa it's, "Please cook it," and "I want to see. I want to help you cook it. Please let me do it." What the what?

I really like having this little adult-impersonator around. It's fun to pretend she's actually an adult and hold a real-life conversation with her. Then, inevitably, she's tired or her skin is itchy, and she breaks down and becomes a toddler again. She hugs me and cries and I remember that she's still a baby. Then, I hold her and nurse her and give her the confidence and security to get back on her feet and into pint-sized adult mode.

I get the best of both worlds, really. I get this cool friend to talk to and hang out with, but I also get the little baby to hold and snuggle with. She will sit on my lap and hug me for 30 minutes straight, or fall asleep in my arms. But when she wakes up, we sit and chat like the ladies on Coffee Talk.

Let's see. What else is new? We are all going to L.A. for Spring Break, where I have a conference for sociology. We are staying at my friend Jose's family's house. We also have (free) tickets to go on The Price is Right while we're there! Come on dooooowwnn! We are going to Uruguay at the beginning of the Summer: June 9 to July 7. We will be meeting with home builders and planting some fruit trees and doing some other small projects on our land. We will rent an apartment and a car for the month, so we should be comfortable and I hope my Spanish abilities improve!

I am currently babysitting for two families (where I bring Isa), teaching online, and conducting interviews for my dissertation. I need to do 100 interviews and I've done 9. Woo hoo! I basically spend all weekend (while Patrick is home with Isa) doing interviews with people. So, my life is basically 7 days/week working, but at least it is set-my-own-hours kind of work. Patrick is working about 50-60 hours a week teaching Spanish at Hinsdale Central. We are busy people right now. But we have goals and it's fun to work toward reaching them!

18 months

Oh our Isa baby is just about a year and a half. We measured her this morning just for fun, and here are her new stats:

-Weight: 28 pounds/ 12.7 kg. She is just about in the 75th percentile now.
-Height: 33 in/ 84 cm. Again just above the 75th percentile.
-Head circumference: 49 cm. Right about at the 90th percentile.

She is really thinning out and growing taller. She hasn't gained much weight since 9 months!

In recent days, she's been starting on 3-4 word sentences. "Where's perrito? Where'd he go? There he is! I found him!" She is learning spanish words and counting. She can kind of count to ten in both Spanish and English, with a little help from us.  She hilariously calls Santa "hump dumpy" (humpty dumpty), probably because they have similar clothing/shape.

She is getting better on the stairs, but is not quite confident enough to go down by herself. She is climbing up on things now, which is good and bad! She is still not a great eater. She recently ate a lot of cheese and then had a big eczema outbreak, so we've been limiting dairy for the time being. Right now her favorite foods are: pretzels, hummus, apples, and bananas.

She is generally a very empathetic person. If someone is sad or frustrated, she runs up to them and says, "Are you ok? I got you," while she pats them with her hand. She loves the Wizard of Oz and asks us to sing "some rainbow" (somewhere over the rainbow) several times a day! She has a Wizard of Oz calendar from her Gram and she knows all the characters by name, and especially loves Toto!

15 months

Isa is now 15 months old! A year and a quarter, baby!

She weighs 27 pounds, is about 32.5 inches tall, and is generally a large human being. She hasn't gained a pound since 9 months, so she's growing up and not out anymore.

She is down to one nap a day -- a very new phenomenon. She stays up about 4 or 4.5 hours after waking up in the morning, sleeps for an average of 2 hours, then stays up for about 6 hours before going to bed for the night.

Isa is talking so much! She says so many words, I couldn't even list them here. She also knows amazing things, like when I say, "Can you pick up that paper and put it in the trash?" She does it! She is beginning to say 2 to 3 word sentences, too, like bye bye mama or more milk!

She loves playing with her baby dolls, hugging and kissing them. She kisses everyone and everything. She's a lover. She also just moves us by pulling our hands or pushing our legs to show us where she wants us to go. She's learning to count to three (and she gets tickled on three). She has been using the toilet on and off when she's bottomless in the evenings. I figure toilet training will just be baby-led, and she will learn gradually over the course of many months. She is also gaining competency on the stairs -- she climbs up on all fours and goes down on her bottom.

13 months old

Well, I guess I missed the most important 1 year old post! Ugh. I guess that goes to show how busy we've been and how busy one can be around the 1 year mark. Isa amazes me every day. It's almost difficult to post progress reports about her development because she's doing so much! Let me try:

The most pronounced change is that her vocabulary and communication skills are rapidly expanding. Her words are becoming clearer (nose, mama, hi) and more consistent in response to our cues. She also understands things more deeply. When we ask her how old she is, she shows us the number 1 with her finger! She also just signed "sleep" today. She waves hello and goodbye and blows kisses.

She walks, runs, and walks backwards. She squats a lot while she is observing something. She likes to hold things in both hands and walk around. We finally found a pair of shes she can walk in (thanks, Bianca), and now she can walk outside anywhere.

She normally takes 2 naps a day, and can stay up from anywhere between 3-6 hours at a time. She is not a very good eater. She gets so much of her nutrition from breast milk still, and we try to introduce new foods, but she mostly plays with them and when they do get in her mouth she gags on the smallest bits of food. It's funny no one would suspect this big baby of being a bad eater, but she really is. :)

We are currently staying in Morgan Park at Patrick's parents house for the time being. We've been having major car troubles and will probably have to junk the scion, and we bought a used hyundai elantra. We have only one car right now, which worked for us in Washington, but may not work well here. We are playing things by ear. Patrick begins work at Hinsdale next week and I am working on huge exams for my PhD program due Sept 10. We are a busy family!

11 months

Well, I am more than a bit behind on posting this month. Isa has been 11 months for a while now, and there's so much to update:
- she began walking at 10 and a half months! Now she is walking everywhere, and there is no stopping her!
- her vocabulary is expanding. She says this, that, hi (and waves), bye, dog, mama, dada, belly button, teeth, eye, kitty, and points to everything trying to learn its name. She signs milk, nurse, tired, and more.
- Isa is much more vocal now, "talking" to us in what sounds like whole sentences, even though at this point it is mostly just ooh's and aah's.
- She is getting better at her small motor skills. She can pick up any tiny thing using her pincer grasp, and is just beginning to hold a pen/crayon to draw
- Her gross motor skills are amazing - she can walk everywhere, squat down to pick things up, stand up on her own without holding on, but she is not yet crawling onto things (thank goodness).

I swear I have photos from this month, but they won't be uploaded until later, when I get them off my camera that is currently in Chicago.

Family updates: We are currently in Wenatchee, WA where Patrick is teaching a Spanish immersion course through WSU Extension. We will be finished here mid-July, so we will be spending Isa's first birthday here in Washington! Also, Patrick got a really, really good job at Hinsdale Central High School (part-time, 80%). He will begin that job in mid-August. We will be moving in Hinsdale once we get back into the Chicagoland area late July. Our other travel plans include Glacier National Park July 18-20, Stevensville Michigan July 27- 30 and Stratford Canada (to see King Lear) August 5-7.

Isa and Papa at 5 months

Okay, what do you think? Is she a combo of us? Or more like her Papa?

10 months old

Isa has been ten months old for a while now, but we're just posting now. A lot has happened during her tenure as a 9 month old. She began standing confidently on her own, taking up to 5 steps between her mama and papa, and has added some words to her vocabulary including bye bye, this, that, and baby.

We have moved from Pullman Washington and are now staying at Patrick's parents house in Chicago. We are still waiting to hear back about Patrick's job prospects, so a lot is still up in the air about where we will be living and where I will be working. Another update to come quite soon about her time as a ten month old, but a little sneak preview: she is walking at ten and a half months old!