I think it really helped that she walked for months with help before striking out on her own, since she seems to have skipped the stage where she can walk but falls often. She's definitely fallen a few times, but her balance is really quite good already. She hasn't quite worked up to running yet, but has been delighted by jumping lately.
Josie can also multi-task (somewhat) now, and has started carrying things more as she walks around. After a shaky start where she tried to carry a full bottle of water but kept toppling over, she now totes around water bottles, and can already talk on the phone and carry my keys around too... is this a preview to her teenage years? ;)
Josie now has eight teeth through - four on the top, and four on the bottom (including one that just cut through in the last couple of days). Her first molar is just starting to work its way through too, which she is very unhappy about. She was very clingy yesterday (as in, she attached herself to my leg at the playground, which is very unusual for her), and then cried the entire time I was getting both of us ready this morning.... and then I saw the little bit of tooth poking through her gums, and all the whining made sense. Poor thing.
Josie has also added a few words to her vocabulary this month, and seems to understand what they are more now rather than just mimicking us. So now she says "bye-bye" (with waving!), "hiya", "mama", "dada/dadat", "no", "uh-oh", "whoa", "hat", and a rough attempt at "banana". I'm still on the fence on if she is actually saying "doggie", "bacon", and "baby". But even if she isn't actually saying "baby" yet, she does at least recognize the word now! The other day I asked her where the baby was, and she grabbed her book with babies on it. I also asked her where "Polar Pals" was, and she went right over and grabbed that book too! Which I'm kind of surprised she recognized, since we normally refer to it as "that awful book" rather than its real name. For whatever reason, it's Josie's favorite book, but Ryan and I both despise it. It's only four pages long, and it just seems highly unlikely that a polar bear would be frolicking and enjoying a cold beverage in an icy lake with a seal.
[Waving and saying bye-bye]
Josie is really making big strides in trying to do things on her own now. It's really been amazing to see how observant she's being and how quickly she goes to mimic us now. We went over to the new house yesterday, and Ryan was trying to get some of the floor to lie down better. Once he was done, Josie went over to grab the rubber mallet, then dragged it throughout the house, occasionally tapping it on the floor just like daddy did :) Then she followed that up by putting her bottle on a coaster just like a big girl and putting on Ryan's headphones too.
She loves to put on her shoes, and will grab her socks when asked and then holds up her feet to have her socks and shoes put on. She also attempts to comb her hair, dry herself off, and snap herself into her car seat. We have a little routine now where Josie carries my keys for me from the car to the front door, surrenders them to me to unlock the door, and then demands them back so that she can then attempt to unlock the door herself. She has gotten the key in the keyhole maybe a couple of times, but her determination and patience is really quite admirable.
Josie has started to get more adept with using a spoon and fork now. Her spoon usage is a bit spotty, since she normally holds it upside-down, which limits just how much she can scoop up - which is probably for the best, since she seems to usually flip the spoon over someplace between her tray and her mouth :) With enough time and intent, she was able to spear some banana and broccoli with her fork the first time she used it.
[She has discovered that feeding Ryan her dinner is fun too]
Given all of her developmental advances and teeth cutting through, it probably shouldn't be that surprising that Josie's sleep pattern is all over the place again. Some nights it takes 10 minutes for her to fall asleep, sometimes up to a couple of hours. Sometimes she falls asleep all on her own, sometimes she needs to hold my hand for half an hour first. Sometimes she's up for the day at 5:30am, sometimes she sleeps in until 10am (although we (sadly) had to put a stop to that since it would mess up her schedule for the rest of the day). Sometimes she sleeps through the night, sometimes she cries out (and occasionally wakes up) roughly every hour from 10pm until she's up for a bottle around 3am. And yet almost the worst part of it is the pinching. She likes to pinch us as she falls asleep, and it is driving us crazy. We've introduced a lovey now, and are trying to redirect her to pinch on that if she feels the need, but she really has had pinching on the brain lately. Even as she walks around, she looks like a crab with her fingers going like little pincers.
Miscellaneous cuteness:
[Little imp :) ]
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