My Baby At 17 Months

Oh what a challenging little monkey I have on my hands. Little can play happily on her own for ages, but if I pop to the toilet I can come back to find her on the table about to drop a vase on the floor. It’s hard to be mad when she looks up at me with her cheeky grin. I feel I have been saying “No” a lot to her this month, and it’s no surprise she now likes to say it back to us.  What else has she been up to?

Sisters sitting on ride on colourful tractors at Lee Valley Farms

Feeding 


Little has definitely become more of a picky eater, when we first introduced food just before 6 months she would try some of everything, but now it can be hard to encourage her to eat meat or potatoes (other than chips). She eats lots of vegetables and particularly enjoys corn, peas, soft onion, celery and kale (both my girls love kale). I’m confident that she is getting what she needs over a day, but each meal isn’t very balanced. I miss the ease of when her big sister was at nursery and it was someone elses job to ensure she ate properly for most of the week. 

Other than a breastfeed at nap time, bedtime and when she wakes up in the morning how often Little feeds varies each day. Some days she asks for milk frequently, other days she isn’t bothered.

Sleep

Sleep is good (for us). We sometimes have a wake up or two and Little is a fan of early mornings, but I can be pretty confident that she will spend most of the night in her cot letting me sleep. In fact I’ve had more problems with the cat waking me up than Little recently. 

Little goes to sleep at 8pm and is usually awake for the day by 6am. I aim to give her a nap at midday, but she often can’t stay awake that long due to the early start. Her nap normally lasts for a couple of hours, but like all children we have good days and bad days. It is so tempting to stay at home all day so she will nap giving me some time to myself.

A collage of 9 photographs of Little and Big Sister and me including in a ball ball, in sand pit, in a Little Tikes house, next to graffitti, in Yo Sushi, next to a Polling Station sign, playing with a water table, being sprayed by a sprinkler and on a scooter

Growth

Little’s hair and teeth have grown a lot this month. She now has 11 teeth at least partially through, 7 on the top and 4 on the bottom and I can feel lots more just below the surface. It’s not surprising she has been chewing on so much recently. Her hair is still short, but it’s now visible. It’s gone really light blonde in the sunshine so her head appears to glow.

She continues to grow steadily and now weighs 11.6kg and measures 83cm. 12 to 18 month clothes are getting a bit tight on Little, but other than a few dresses we haven’t moved her up a size yet. Sorting out all her clothes will be the plan for the next month. I’m excited to get out Big Sister’s old clothes and all the items we couldn’t resist purchasing for Little. 

Activities 

Little loves to have adventures and explore. She can happily play on her own, but this may lead to chaos if you aren’t watching. She is that deceptive quiet child who will spread Sudocrem all over your TV (she hasn’t actually done this as she can’t reach them). I had to call 111 this month after Little managed to squirt hand soap into her mouth, fortunately it’s not as toxic as the label lead me to fear and she was fine. 

Little can be very active and she loves to run around, spin around in circles and walk backwards, normally with a big cheeky grin on her face. She loves to dance and normally prefers music to watching TV. She knows the actions to more and more songs, we now get a good attempt at actions for: sleeping bunnies and 5 little monkeys as well as the songs mentioned last month.

In quieter moments Little loves to read and be read too. I have watched her spend half an hour sitting down next to a pile of books, flicking her way through each one before putting it in a discard pile. She has found a new use for books too: scribbling in them. Due to Big Sister there are often felt tips around and Little loves to either eat them or draw on things. I try and redirect her from the books and furniture to some paper, but I don’t always get there in time. 

The last month has seen Little continue to form strong, but temporary attachments to items resulting in tantrums if I take them away. We have been on multiple school runs with Little clutching a bag full of treasures she has collected from around the house. She also shows her increasing independence by insisting on going down the stairs on her own most mornings. This would be less of a worry if she went down backwards or on her bum, but she likes to do it the same way as the rest of us.

At groups Little is often the youngest and, like at home with Big Sister, she is used to others getting to toys first or taking them off her. She isn’t always happy about it, but often she shows no signs of concern. We recently had a boy her age come round to our house and she didn’t want to share any of her toys, taking everything off him that he wanted to play with. Understandable the little boy wasn’t very happy about having everything snatched off him even when he was playing nicely on his own.

Little is such a climber and is frequently found on a variety of different surfaces that aren’t the floor. We will need to attach all the furniture to the wall in her room before we can leave her in there safely (outside of the cot). Fortunately she is getting much better at climbing down again safely which makes it a little less stressful.

She has a good attempt at putting her clothes on, but fortunately doesn’t take them off. The same doesn’t apply to her nappy, which she often takes off. We have been putting her in a pull up when she is wearing a dress so it stays on, but we’ve had a few hand-in-dirty-nappy incidents… yuck!

With the beautiful weather we have been in the garden a lot and the poor plants have suffered. In the last month Little has continued to pull off most of the flowers and pick strawberries (sometimes the strawberries have even been ready to eat!). It has given us a good opportunity to practise throwing, kicking and rolling balls though and we've spent time splashing in the paddling pool.

Little sitting in the garden on a railway sleeper in front of snap dragons with lots of pulled off flowers in front of her

Communication

Little talks to us a lot and I can now understand at least some of what she says. It’s hard to know how much is actual words and how much I just understand her from us spending so much time together and context. She also mimics a lot of what we say so you can’t tell if she’s repeating something or if she has learnt the word. New words this month include: miaow, Mer (for her sister), bowl, garden (gar), book, bottle (for water), mummy milk, boob, uh oh, ouch and no. I’m also pretty confident she asks: what’s that?, where? and there. She uses her hands to sign for food, she shrugs to say 'I don't know' and she now regularly waves to people saying "buh bye".

Her understanding is really good and she follows a lot of my instructions. There are other times she clearly understands me, but refuses to cooperate. She can be really helpful too, she helps tidy up, take rubbish out, feed the cat and get the mat out to change her nappy when I say she needs a nappy change. She knows where her chin, ears, nose, mouth and hair are (and her head, knees and toes, we’re aren’t too good on shoulders).

The tantrums have increased because she knows better what she wants, and it’s not always what we want. I’m trying to explain what we are doing and why which definitely helps, and I pick my battles (it doesn’t really matter if she takes bags of things out with her). 

Little has a great bond with her sister (and the cat) as well as her Daddy and me. If she isn’t feeling at her best she wants me most though. She is initially shy around new people and will hide behind my legs, but she quickly grows in confidence and will smile back at them if I give her reassurance.


7 comments

  1. I absolutely love posts like these, I like to compare when my little lady was this age. Your little one is soooooo adorable!

    ReplyDelete
  2. These kinds of posts are so lovely as they are such a nice reminder to look back on in the future, as well as keeping track too :-) Time flies, brilliant idea to capture all the little details while you can x

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ah so cute! I love reading posts like these :-) lets me know stuff what to expect when D grows up :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yes children are sneaky and play happily until you pop out for a sec then unleash havoc! Lovely post to reflect on all the wonderful developments and milestones being reached

    ReplyDelete
  5. It's so interesting to read the development of a child around a year ahead of my youngest. I have forgotten almost everything from when I had my middle child almost five years ago! This was a lovely update x

    ReplyDelete
  6. |So sweet. It will be lovely to look back on this time.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I love these posts, seeing how much they change in such a short time is lovely xx

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comment (unless it's spam in which case, why?)