Baby-boo is 16 months old today!

We celebrated by doing one of Allie’s favorite things: taking a bike ride to the beach.


Allie loves this baby seat, the Ibert. Mr. W did a lot of research and this came highly recommended. Not bad at about $80, easy to install and to remove if Allie isn’t going to be riding with him. Her legs don’t get in the way kicking. She feels nice and secure with the snap-down bar and the straps. She loves that thing so much that the other day, when it was time to get her out of the bike, she protested, and pulled the bar back down and snapped it closed herself, holding it down with her hands so Mr. W couldn’t lift her out. He thought that was hilarious. This also gives her more visibility than pulling her in the bike trailer, and allows more interaction between the rider and the baby. The trailer is good for less ideal weather, longer rides, or multiple/bigger kids. The extra interaction is how Mr. W discovered that Allie hums when riding, and occasionally says, “Wheeee.” She also points out stuff to him as they go.

Allie vocabulary seems to have blossomed this month. She uses words we didn’t even know she knew. Walking through the garage, she pointed at our bikes mounted on the wall and said, “Bike?” We thought Jayne pointed out our bikes to her when they would leave for their stroller walks to the park by exiting the garage, but Jayne said she never did. “We see other kids ride bikes, though, and I’d tell her to look at the kids on their bikes.” Sure enough, Allie points and says “bike” whenever she sees anyone ride by on a bicycle. Earlier in the week, she pointed up and said, “Moon.” There was indeed the moon hanging in the sky. We theorize that she got that from our readings of “Goodnight, Moon,” because each time she points out the moon, it would be followed by a wave and a “bye-bye.” Riding on the bike, each time we pass a playground, she’d point and say, “Pock!” (park) and whimper in protest when we wouldn’t stop. We took her to my parents’ house this morning and she got to play most of the morning at the playground across the street from their house. When we left, she said waved at the direction of the park and said, “Bye-bye pock.” Today, she called her snack smoothie a “smeemee” and pointed whenever she was ready for more. She also says more, although it comes out more like “mo.” She attempts to emulate words more, saying “beet” when I fed her beets. She got a playful glint in her eye earlier when she emptied all the blocks out of the wooden box they come in and said, “Hat,” then turned the box upside down and put it on her head. Also today, she pointed up at the wallpaper trim of Pooh and friends in her room and said, “Pooh.” Even when she’s not talking, we’ve all been surprised recently by how much she apparently understands. “Hold on to the swing,” “throw the ball,” “put that rock over there,” “put this shirt in the hamper,” “blow a kiss,” “where’s mama’s eyebrow?”, “pick up that hat and bring it to me,” “blow this dandelion fluff.” She did it all.

In the car this morning coming home, after playing at the park, I noted the glazed look on her face and said to Mr. W, “She’s pooped.” Allie snapped out of her reverie, looked at me with a surprised expression, moved her seat belt buckle aside, pointed at her butt/diaper, and said, “Poo?” I laughed.

She takes her single nap at noonish, and we can’t figure out why she’ll sleep over 2 hours with us and about 90 minutes with Jayne. I’m thinking Jayne talks on the phone when Allie’s napping and Allie can hear it. Allie still nurses twice a day, about 10 minutes in the morning after she wakes up and 20 minutes before she goes to bed.

She’s still a mama’s girl. We took her for a quick visit to Dwaine’s before getting to my parents’ house, and as she’d only been there once, she was very shy and clung to me. We did manage to get a picture, though.

If she’s scared or hurt, dada isn’t enough, she verbally would request me. Most of the time, if she’s with Mr. W so I could get something done, I can’t walk by her without her dropping whatever she’s doing and whining until I pick her up or she gets to follow me around. I consider this only fair given that for the first almost-year of her life, she was totally daddy’s girl. As long as she’s got better things to do, however, she’ll let others watch her without me. At the playground by my parents’ house today, I wasn’t there half the time, and she had a blast playing with some other kids who were there, chasing around a ball, being pushed by grandma and grandpa on the swing, and she realized she could climb up a toddler section on her own, walk across the short platform, and sit at the edge of a small slide, push off, scoot herself off the slide the rest of the way, and get down all on her own. She’s on her way to independence.

Jayne reports that Allie is usually the best-behaved girl at the park; she’d run up to strange kids and play with them, help them put sand in their buckets, touch them and hug them. The problem are the mean kids who would push her away and the other day, Jayne let Allie crawl into a playground tunnel after a little boy, but got up to check on them, and saw the little boy in the tunnel trying to step on Allie’s fingers. Mr. W is a little concerned that because Allie doesn’t interact much with other little kids (like siblings), she doesn’t learn to be wary of kids so she’ll get abused when she eventually goes into daycare or preschool. I won’t worry about that, yet. For now, I’ll just enjoy the fact that my baby is friendly and loving and loves to help and share. She’s big enough to stand her ground if she needs to, and besides, both Dwaine and Andrae had offered to give her karate lessons when she’s older. 🙂