Our littlest love is quickly working her way through the early toddler years. Hannah Maxine remains a force to be reckon with. She is fierce, so cuddly and loving, extremely happy, loud, demanding, strong-willed and determined. She’s living up to her middle name more than we could have expected. This girl is not short on personality!
Hannah’s stats:
- Weight: at her 12-month check up she was 23 pounds 3 ounces {90th percentile}
- Length: around 29 inches give or take
- Clothing size: outgrowing 12-18m so anything I buy now is 18-24m
- Shoe size: baby size 3
- Number of teeth: six
- Eye color: bluish turquoise
- New words this month: kitty, blueberry, water
- Favorite foods: fruit, pasta, crackers
- Least favorite foods: beef, chicken, avocado
- Favorite things/activities: big brother Ben, dogs, really any animals, watching the airplanes, playing with cars, cuddling, reading books, eating, climbing
- Least favorite things/activities: diaper changes, getting strapped into her car seat, abruptly stopping an activity when mom forgets to explain what’s going on, really loud noises
The biggest thing that’s going on with Hannah this month has been her transition to walking! Just three days ago we finally deemed her a walker. Over the last 6 weeks or so she had been taking a step here and there, then 2-5 steps here and there and then finally! She decided she was ready.
I made the call that she was officially a walker at Ben’s first soccer practice. She was standing next to me on the field and just started walking towards the bigger kids playing soccer. Ben noticed and ran over exclaiming “mama! Do you see Hannah walking??” She kept practicing her steps as Ben was playing soccer and he would frequently come over and clap for her, one time grabbing her hand and helping her walk. We are so proud of our little walker!
Hannah is really sharp with her fine motor skills and seems to challenge herself in small body movements. When it comes to gross motor skills, like crawling and walking, she really waits until she is good and ready. Walking seems to be no different. She seems to have been physically ready for more than a month but was holding off until she was comfortable. Switching gears to fine motor skills, Hannah is working on mastering the art of using a fork. She loves to feed herself!
This last month Hannah took her first airplane ride! Hannah LOVES airplanes. Anytime she hears a plane flying overhead she will reach her little arm up and point to the sky, even if she can’t see it. That’s her sign for “airplane!”
I had very low expectations for taking a very loud and wiggly Hannah on a 4+ hour flight to Wisconsin. I was so prepared with everything I could think of to make the flight more bearable. Turns out, all I needed were a couple snacks and one or two toys and she’d take care of the rest. She was so into the airplane and the experience that she was just so excited the whole time. I was even able to get her to fall asleep in the baby carrier on both flights. She was a travel pro!
I will post more about our trip to Wisconsin shortly, but one highlight was spending time with and meeting her great grandma, Nana. Nana is Alex’s and my only surviving grandparent at this point. It was very special to introduce her to Hannah.
Lately, Hannah has been really getting into reading books. She’s obsessed with interactive books, especially “lift the flap” and ones that make noise when you push a button. Her favorite books right now are “Dear Zoo” and “Planes Go.”
Hannah has been working on communication a lot recently. She’s getting to be a little patient, too! She has been signing more – she mastered “all done” a while ago and the other day she randomly signed for “help” when she was frustrated. It’s been a while since I’ve seen her sign for “more” and she tells me “water” when she is thirsty. She has a tendency to be rather demanding so we’ve been encouraging her to sign “please” – she’s not too keen on this one yet! She hasn’t said many new words this last month, but the ones she did say came out of left field and were spoken so articulately. A lot of her babbling is really just babbles, but when she really says a word {which is rare} it is so clear.
Last month I mentioned that sleep had been a challenge. I can laugh at that this month because this last month has undeniably been the most difficult sleep month of Hannah’s life. I attribute her challenges with sleep to travel. Unfortunately in that regard it’s just something we’ll have to deal with.
Another big change for Hannah is that last month she stopped nursing. It was fairly anticlimactic – both of us were ready. Nursing was suuuuch a big part of our time together for so long and then right around when Hannah turned one we started turning her milk intake to a cup of cow’s milk. It took a bit for her to adjust but now she loves cow’s milk like her big brother. She’s even had a couple steamed milks when we’ve gone to the coffee shop.
I think this month our trip to Wisconsin and the end of our time nursing is the cause of the latest sleep regression for Hannah. For the two weeks following our Wisconsin trip Hannah rose for the day by 4:15 a.m. and that was usually preceded by a fitful sleep. Finally after we had been home about 3 weeks she started sleeping through the night and waking after 5. We have a lot of travel ahead of us in the coming weeks so we’ll see what happens, but we’re ending her 14th month on a good sleep note.
My sweet girl and I have gotten a lot of extra cuddle time in this month during the early morning hours. We cuddle together on the floor of her room, she has her yogurt pouch while I sip my coffee. We snuggle. Then we read for a while and snuggle some more while we wait for one of the boys to come in. This girl is a world class cuddle bug.
More and more each day Hannah becomes completely smitten with her brother. I’m positive the feeling is mutual. These two are so stinking cute together. Hannah loves doing anything Ben does. She tries so hard to play cars with him and she’ll be trailing right behind him saying “vroooooommmm” while he’s running full speed ahead pushing his car.
These days and weeks and months keep flying by. We have a lot on the docket for this next one. I have a feeling it’s going to be a good one! It is going to be so fun to watch how Hannah’s world changes now that she’s mobile on her feet.
