Gwen's 15 Month Stats

Gwen had her fifteen month appointment with her pediatrician today. She weighed in at 2o lbs 8 oz and was almost 31 inches long, putting her in the 25th and 50th percentiles respectively. Her head circumference continues to defy all odds by being in the 90th percentile at 18 3/4 inches! She continues to learn new things all of the time. Here are a few that come to mind:

-Gwen recently started to fold her arms during a prayer (as pictured above). Sometimes she will keep them folded for the whole prayer. In the evenings we have family prayer and we usually hold her while we pray. Last night she started the prayer in my lap with her arms folded. However, she was squirmy so I let her go and she crawled over to some toys and began to play with them. When the prayer was over we looked over at her. She looked up at us and quickly folded her arms as if she had had them folded the entire prayer. It was precious!

-Gwen will say "Hi" and "Bye". She usually has to be asked to say them, and you can almost see her little mind working as she pronounces them in her own way. After she says a word she is so happy with herself and smiles really big.

-Gwen loves to "organize", although there is an equal amount of disorganizing involved! She's in the stage where she likes to put things into something, and then take them all out again. When we were in Maine she took all the shampoo bottles off the ledge in the bathtub and then worked to put them all back up. The other night she pulled a bunch of diapers out of her closet and put them all on the rug. then she put them all on the wood floor, then she moved them all back to the rug. Recently her favorite thing to play with is an empty yogurt container and about five hair clips. She puts them into the container, shakes them up until they all fall out, and then collects them and puts them all in again. What is so amazing is how driven she is. She does not get distracted by anything else when she is "organizing." If something gets in her way she throws it to the side. The other amazing thing is how long she'll do it for. She doesn't ever seem to get sick of organizing!

-Gwen's current obsession is climbing a short flight of stairs that goes up to our bedroom. She loves to climb them and shrieks with excitement as she gets near the top of the stairs. She's pretty good at it, but we still spot her as she goes up. She is learning to go down, but needs lots of reminders to make it down safely. We have a gate we put at the bottom of the stairs and it makes her so mad when we put it up. Sometimes she says, "Aaaaa" in a disappointed tone or sometimes she cries about it.

-Gwen continues to be a great eater. She likes cheese, pasta, some meat, bread, oatmeal, and dutch babies. She eats lots of vegetables (carrots, corn, broccoli, beans, peas, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, you name it!) to start a meal and she'll eat a lot of fruit to end it. She loves fruit. The bananas have to be hidden before she gets in her high chair or else so will see them on top of the fridge, say 'ba ba ba" meaning banana, and refuse to eat anything else. She has mastered the art of drinking from a cup.

-Gwen likes to play with puzzles from the library. She doesn't really do them yet (although sometimes she tries), she just likes playing with the pieces. The past few weeks we had a transportation puzzle with planes, cars and trains. Dad would make the cars drive around while making a car sound like "rrrrrr". Gwen copied him and loved driving the pieces along people, furniture, or the ground. Her favorite piece was the taxi, but she also liked to carry around the bus and a blue convertible. We happened to have a book from the library that had a picture of a taxi in it. If we were reading that book and came to the taxi page, if Gwen wasn't already holding it, Gwen HAD to go and find the taxi puzzle piece before we could continue.

-Gwen loves to go outside and crawl all around. She used to stay on a blanket, but now she likes to get dirty. She plays with her bubbles or a couple soccer balls. She finds rocks and leaves and puts them in her mouth. We go on walks and she woofs at each dog we pass. If we see a cat and it is friendly enough to come towards us, she gets really excited to pet it.

-Gwen's next major accomplishment will be walking... we hope! She's still not quite there. She is getting pretty good at walking while just holding on with one hand, but she sits down and crawls if she can't hold onto something. Her babysitter has a walker that she likes to use. She looks so cute because she kind of waddles. She's not so good at turning the walked while walking, but she'll sit down, turn the walker by moving it with her arms, and then stand up and keep going.