15 months!

So our Big Lady is now officially another quarter year older! 15 months isn't really a big milestone, though it does come with a well-visit at the pediatrician next week, which I always enjoy (until the shots part, of course.) I love to check-in with the doctor and make sure the munchkin is healthy and right on track. I'm also interested to see how much she's grown. We're convinced she's finally slowed down in the growth department, as her little belly is slowly melting away. I'll be sure to update everyone on Monday!

This kiddo is getting crazier and more hilarious every day. Here's what she's up to these days:

- Daddy is no longer the bee's knees (in the eyes of Brooke, that is...I still think he's pretty cool.) Mommy has become her bestest good friend. She still talks about Daddy all day long and even sits by the door to wait for him at the end of the day. But that's where it ends. When he gets home, she's all "Good to see ya, Dad, but I'm gonna head back on over to Mom, k?" She and I are attached at the hip now. If I leave the room, she follows me. If I go upstairs, leaving her with Daddy, she stands at the bottom of the stairs calling/crying for me. It's endearing, but also tiring. Why? Well...

- Her favorite word is "up". I bet I hear "up! up! up!" 70 million times a day. She wants to be up on the couch with me or be picked up by me or be up on my lap. It's as if she heard my OB tell me that I should limit how much I pick her up, so now she's trying to soak it all in while she can. I'm telling you, this girl knows something is up, that somebody is going to invade her little world very soon and occupy her Mommy's time...and lap.

- Tooth #10 made an appearance this month, another molar. That means we can start moving on to crunchier foods soon!

- She is learning to feed herself with utensils. It's a very fun, but very messy, process. I'm praying she'll master it soon, especially before Baby Reeder comes.

- She's gotten really proficient at finding body parts. She knows where her eyes, ears, nose, mouth, teeth, hands, feet, neck, and back are, and we're working on knees right now. She loves to point them out on Mommy & Daddy, too, which is adorable...until a chubby little finger starts inching towards your eyeball as she gleefully says "Eyes!"
- She had her first truly bratty experience at a restaurant this month. It was the most frustrating lunch of my life, the first time I've ever been truly embarrassed by her behavior. She was whiny and rambunctious, throwing grilled cheese on the floor and purposely disobeying me. Thankfully, we were just eating with family, so they were the only ones to witness this blessed event. She was the definition of a girl who seriously should have taken a morning nap!
- Morning naps are still hit-and-miss. She's still getting a good 2-3 hours of naps a day, whether it's divided into two or just the one. And she's finally (hallelujah!) sleeping through the night...most of the time. I have to intervene (i.e. go in and give her her pacifier and lay her back down) every so often the first few hours she's in bed, but after midnight it's very rare for me to have to go in. I'd say it happens once a week. She cries out a lot in the middle of the night, but she usually puts herself right back to sleep.
- Emptying Mommy's wallet is her favorite thing to do. The girl loves her some cash and credit cards!

- Despite the ever-present tantrums, she's really starting to get sweet, too. Like this morning, when she melted my heart into a pile of mush. Back in my 1st trimester, you'd often find me laying on the floor of her playroom, watching her play while I laid there exhausted and trying not to throw up. It was an almost-daily occurrence, and I frequently used one of her stuffed animals as a pillow. Well, today, I laid down on the floor in the family room, pretending to go to sleep. Brooke looks at me, runs into her playroom, then runs back in with her big stuffed snowman (which is almost the size of her, so not an easy thing to run with.) She hands it to me and says "Nigh-night". Um, I almost cried at the sweetness of her gesture. Such a big heart in my Big Lady!

I love looking back at old blogs posts to see where she was vs. where she is now, so I'm going to once again document her vocab progress. So many words!

New Words at 15 months:
Brooke!
eyes
ears
neck
yeah (still working on yes)
uh oh
drink
snack (pronounced "nack" b/c she hasn't mastered the "s" sound yet)
up
down
sock (pronounced "dock")
shoe
pat
back
blueberry (pronounced "blue-a-wee", this is hilarious)
duck
hop
happy
Mickey

New Sounds: lion, bear, duck, the horn on the bus (beep! beep!), what a bunny does (hop hop hop)

And because I've been terrible about posting pics lately, here are even more pictures from this month!

It's very rare to get any pictures where she's actually looking at the camera anymore. She's way too on-the-go to stop for photos. But I did get a few!

  Becoming quite the little monkey!

Freshly bathed babies in robes? Yum!

 I'll ask her to say "cheese" and she does, she just doesn't look at me when she does it. But, really, can you handle this robe? Because I can't!