17 Months Old

Zoe turns 17 months old today. Some of her favorite things to do include, going for a ride on her bike (she doesn't peddle yet, but loves riding on it while daddy pushes it along for their daily walks), sliding down the slides that are across the street from our house, playing with her sandbox in the backyard, looking for birds outside the dining room window, helping the cat drink from the water bowl, and taking baths of her own.

Her favorite things to eat right now are raisins/craisins, wheat thins, cheese, fruit, muffins, carrots, yogurt, and anything you attempt to munch on. She loves her daddy's cooking, mostly his chicken stir fry. She eats like a little piggy when we go to our favorite little asian restaurant, she eats tofu (YUCK!), snap peas, waterchestnuts, chicken and handfuls of rice. She does much better with using her fork and spoon during meals. She can feed herself yogurt and can stab her fruit with her fork and feed herself. She almost prefers to hold onto her fork while she shovels food in with her other hand. However, if it's something like yogurt, she'll effectively use her spoon to shovel.

Her vocabulary has increased over the past month. Following are the majority of the things she says: Daddy, D, bye bye, bird, more, thank you, kitty, dog, cheese, no, yea, hat, socks, shoes, ear, hair, nose, head, teeth, belly, Lannie, me, hi, hot, outside, slide, bike, night-night, baby, where?, tree, light, bad, hello. Now, she's not real clear on some of these things, but she attempts to say them and effectively communicates them to us, so they count. She pronounces "Lannie" as "Lee-lee" and will put one of her own toys in front of Lannie and tell her "bad", She very clearly can say "outside" and says it over and over and over when it's time to go out and play.

Zoe is trying to put her own socks and shoes on even while I type this. She can easily slip on mommy's shoes and walks around in them - but has trouble with her own. When she goes out back to play, she insists to Lannie that she come out, too. When we get ready to leave the house, she goes to the back door and yells for "Leelee" to come back inside.... even when Lannie is sleeping on the couch.

She brushes her own teeth, blows kisses, gives hugs, brings you books that she wants you to read to her, she'll also take your hand and lead you to where she wants to go. She's down to just one nap a day now, it varies from 1 hour to 2 and a half. It's usually in the late afternoon. I don't get home from work until close to 9 at night, and so far, she's been awake for me to put her to sleep all but 1 night. On my days off, I manage to completely disrupt her schedule and she's ready to go to bed by 8 - which is fine because I usually am, too! Zoe wears me out as much as I wear her out, I think.

A few weeks ago, she got a potty seat to go on the big potty. She knows when she goes potty and heads to the bathroom, gets her seat out and puts it on the toilet. She does this a couple times a day, it's still just a novelty for her, but we're excited that she puts the 2 actions together. We're not pushing the toilet training yet, but follow through with the actions of sitting her on the potty until she's ready to get down, which is usually about 2 minutes. She pulls a clean diaper out of the cabinet in the bathroom and lays down on the floor for us to put it on her.

I know I don't keep up with the blog as much as I used to, time is just too hard to come by these days. However, I do make a point to update her photo album and video page weekly.

Love to all,
Zoe's Mommy