baby girl: 15 months

Today, my little girl is 15 months old.  The 3 months since her first birthday have been a wild ride.  It started with her 6th nerve palsy diagnosis, and I swear she has been sick every day since then.  First, the virus that caused her lazy eye, a persistent runny nose and cough, the flu, and most recently, exploding diapers.  (However, I will say I’m thankful it was only out one end…)  Thank goodness she’s just so darn cute and funny that despite all the sickness, she’s been a joy to be around!

MacKenna is still working on walking.  She took her first steps right around 14 months, but hasn’t quite progressed from there.  She still holds on to things to stand up and is a little unstable still when standing on her own.  But, she’s getting better at it every day.  She loves to push around her walkers and is getting to the point where she’d rather hold on and cruise to get to things than crawl.  But, she still knows crawling is the fast mode of transportation for her, so she chooses that quite frequently.  Whether it’s being petite or lazy, I don’t know.  I do know that she will eventually walk, so I’m not worried about it yet.  If she’s not walking in 3 more months, then I’ll start to worry!

What MacKenna isn’t doing with walking, she’s certainly making up for in talking.  Little Miss just doesn’t shut up!  I think she learns a new word about once a week and is starting to string some words together.  Her most recent new word is “light”, which she pronounces “ye-ight”.  So stinking cute!  Also in her vocabulary:  “Hi… (insert Mama, Dada, Kitty, Gigi)”, “Bu-bye”, “Eye”, “Bite”, “No no”, “That”, “Ball”, “Baby”, “Button”, “Cheese”, “Teeth”, “Beep”, “Puppy”.  She also knows hair, nose, bottle (“baba”), waffle (“wawa”), belly button, and knock, but isn’t quite able to say the words that goes with those things.  She is constantly trying to have incoherent conversations with us, and all we can do is nod and say, “Oh yeah?  Is that right?”  I love being able to communicate with her so much.  Like Matt says, it’s like a cat that learns how to talk!

If you can’t tell from talking with her, she’s definitely a smart little girl.  She has the body of a 9 month old, but the brain of a toddler much older than 15 months.  She is constantly picking up new words, either by saying them or being able to communicate with her hands.  She also learned how to sign “more” and “all done”, but doesn’t use them correctly every time.  She usually tries to figure out how to do things herself and loves being able to play independently.

However, she’s a girl who knows what she wants and will certainly let you know if she is mad or frustrated.  With being as smart as she is, she certainly knows how to throw tantrums like a 2 year old.  She’ll throw herself on the floor, kick her legs, or bang her head against the wall.  Most of the time she’s a happy girl, but dang, those tantrums are tough!  We’re still working on discipline with her, but she just doesn’t get it yet.  Well, she knows what “No” means, but that doesn’t mean she likes it!

As for her 6th nerve palsy, the virus has completely healed itself and her eye can move all the way to the outside again on it’s own.  However, because this occurred at a critical time in her development, her eyes no longer move together.  She can see perfectly fine, but while her right eye (her good eye) rests in the center, her left eye (her bad eye) rests toward the center.  Unfortunately, the only way to fix this is through surgery.  We are surprisingly both OK with this, I think because she was already put under general anesthesia for her MRI back in November, so I’m not worried about that any more.  The plan is to loosen the muscles in both eyes so they are able to work in sync again.  The best part about this is that there is no cutting of the muscles – they take the insertion point of the muscle and move it back to loosen it up.  This will make her recovery much easier.  She will no longer need to be patched everyday and won’t need glasses either.  The bad part:  the whites of her eyes will be bruised for a week or two.  They will go from red to purple to yellow to white.  There is also a good chance she might need the surgery again at some point in her life, which I understand is pretty common with strabismus (lazy eye) surgery.  But, I think I will just be happy that her eyes will work together again.  Hopefully, the doctor will give us some exercises to do with her so that we can avoid future surgeries.  Dreading and looking forward to February 1st all at the same time!

15 months facts:

• Weight:  About 17 pounds, give or take (the first percentile).  We won’t know for sure until her checkup later this month.
• Clothing size:  Anywhere from 6 months to 12 months, but 9 month clothes fit her best right now.
• Shoe size:  Size 2. 
• Diapers:  We are still loving our cloth diapers, although it hurts her bum a bit.  We got our nighttime heavy wetting situation taken care of (thank you hemp inserts!) so we are pretty much 98% cloth, unless travelling or out of inserts.  She wears a 2 or 3 in disposables.
• Sleep:  She sleeps usually from 8 PM to 6 AM during the week, but will sleep until 7 or 8 on the weekends (when I don’t have to get her up).  Typically one nap in the afternoon ranging anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours.
• Food:  We just got over a week long hunger strike, thanks to tummy issues, but she eats 3 meals a day and 1 or 2 snacks.  She drinks 1 bottle before bed and lots of water or milk out of sippy cups.
• Words:  About 20 that she can for sure say, and several more that she can’t quite say but we know what she’s talking about.
• Likes:  Talking, push or ride toys, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, music, books
• Hates:  Not getting her way, diaper changes, staying still for any given amount of time, getting into the carseat (once she’s in, she’s fine)

My little Kenna Kenna:  your 2nd year of life has been a wild ride already.  I have enjoyed every second of it and can’t wait to see what the next 3 months have in store for us.  First, can we please stop with all these viruses?!

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And the winner of the Sparkly Soul giveaway is…

Lauren B!  Congrats!  Shoot me an email (klvanhorn [at] gmail [dot] com) so we can get those Sparkly Soul headbands to you ASAP!  Thanks to everyone for entering!  And don’t worry, I have a few more giveaways coming up in the next few weeks!