17 Months

Josie has had a good time exploring the new house the last few weeks.  It may be coincidence or she may just like the new house, but she has been spending an inordinate amount of time running around happily screeching or getting into everything.  I think we had a bit of a honeymoon period after she started walking since she really didn't get into everything that she could have, but now she's opening - and climbing into - all of the cabinets (which have since been locked up), climbing up on the couch herself, getting into and out of our shower by herself (and pretending to suds up her belly while she's in there), climbing onto the coffee table, etc.

[Blurry troublemaker]

[Shortly before we removed her from the coffee table... again]

As seen in the background of the above picture, we did actually put up a tree this year!  And no, I didn't run out of ornaments - the bottom third is purposely undecorated because I didn't want to have to tell Josie "no" a bunch of times over whether or not she could eat the ornaments.  Although she has been very helpful in pointing out which ones were still too low, as she pulled off the ones she could reach and then gave them to me :)

She has been participating in games and songs more now too.  It seemed before that Josie liked to watch other people play games and sing songs, but she wasn't inclined to join in.  But now she loves to play "Ring Around the Rosey", and will "sing" along with the ABC song in that she'll gleefully say gibberish while we sing to her, and she'll also do the hand motions to "The Itsy Bitsy Spider".  We took also her to storytime at our library again, and she actually participated in one of the activities. There were several felt "Christmas cookies" on the wall, and each kid was supposed to take one, say their name for inclusion in the next verse, and then give back the cookie at the end.  Josie adorably stood up there while the other kids each took a cookie, then marched up and took one herself.  It went downhill after that though, since she can't really say her name, and she also grabbed the other cookies rather than giving hers up at the end ;)

Josie can now open and close doors now (as long as they're not latched), which mainly comes in handy in the mornings when we're getting her ready to go.  So when we tell her to get her shoes on, she'll go to the coat closet, open the door, pick out her shoes (lately she's been going for her pink boots with pompoms), and then will go and sit on the bottom stair for us to put her shoes and coat on - screeching in delight and flailing her arms around all the while.  She is picking up more things to mimic us on, and is obsessed lately with pushing... things.  Brooms, windshield scrapers, whatever can be fairly easily pushed along.

As far as language this month, she has added a couple of real words, but still continues to say a lot gibberish, most of it with very interesting inflection.  It seems she knows what she's saying and how to say it, it's just that we can't make sense of it quite yet ;)  And she also has her own way of communicating, since she likes to greet the other babies at daycare by saying "no!" and pointing to each one, and then will go through that routine again when she's up from her nap.  But she apparently said "hold on" at daycare, and then has made an attempt at saying her name, and has also said "Nana", "deer", and several body parts.

In fact, the body parts may be the biggest area she developed in this month.  We started with eyes and ears, but I think she really figured out what was going on when we worked on bellies.  So she loves to show off her belly now, specifically her belly button.  She also can identify her feet, hands, eyes, and ears (and supposedly eyebrows) when asked, and very clearly said "ear!" the other day as she grabbed my ear.

Her sleep is still all over the place, but seems to be going in a positive direction overall at least.  Her crib went into her own room when we moved, so we weren't sure quite what to expect as she adjusted to sleeping on her own for the first time in her life.  The first week she did quite well, going to sleep fairly easily (on her own a few times too), and sleeping through the night a few times.  But then she got sick, had molars coming through, etc., and she started waking up several times overnight again.  That seems to have settled down again though, and she's actually sleeping through the night (usually waking for the day between 5:45-6:30am) most of the time now, and maybe just waking up once during the night once or twice a week.

The problem is now that she's taking foreeeever to go to sleep in the first place - crying it out only worked for a brief period of time it seems, so we're back to sitting with her until she falls asleep. While at least she doesn't need us actually touching her at all times now, she still won't fall asleep unless we're sitting right next to her crib, sometimes for an hour or more.  Argh.  And yet, she also has a new winner for "oddest place Josie has fallen asleep", as Ryan came back from the playground with her sound asleep on his shoulders:

[Don't mind Ryan's questionable hairs - the mustache was for Movember, and the mohawk has also since been trimmed down]

Miscellaneous cuteness:

[Taking a call from her 80s-era cell phone.... er, power strip]

 

[Under her neck is a favorite storage place]

[Listening to music, although in general, this kid knows how to do things on my computer that I don't even know how to do]

[Misc silliness]

Thanksgiving

So we hosted Thanksgiving this year - a week and a half after moving, and with Ryan being gone on work travel for a week of that time. But luckily my mom stayed with me for the week, ostensibly to help out with Josie but really she helped immensely with moving and unpacking stuff every day after work.  So we were in pretty good shape by time Ryan got back, with at least the main level of the new house being fairly well unpacked and organized.  And we probably should have been more stressed about Thanksgiving, but I'm thinking we were just numb to the stress by that point, given all the house stuff we've been going through.  Everyone brought food and drinks, and everything was delicious with no major calamities, so all in all it went very well.

The only real issues were that the turkey breast didn't get all the way cooked, since we had roasted it breast side down to maximize juiciness, but then struggled to get it to the right temperature without overcooking the dark meat.  We attempted to flip it over, but this 21-pound bird wasn't interested in cooperating and promptly split in half.  We ended up cutting off all the dark meat and just putting the breast back in for a while longer.  So here is the (still upside-down) turkey just before it was divided up:

Note in the above picture the skillet of spinach - that was one of the other bits that didn't go quite right, since we sauteed a whole bunch of spinach, to be accompanied by some whole roasted cloves of garlic... and then forgot all about it until we came across it while cleaning up after the meal. We still had plenty of food though, so it worked out fine - and I still ate all of it over the next week, so at least it wasn't wasted :)

[The spread]

We were fortunate enough to get to spend Thanksgiving with Ryan's parents, one of his sisters and her kids, my mom and aunt, my brother and sister-in-law, and even my dad and stepmom all the way from Michigan.

  

[About half of our guests, in our still pretty bare living room]

[My brother and sister-in-law]

[Josie, taking care of her offending barrette]

Josie was pretty much in her element: she was in her own space, surrounded by people who were willing to give her plenty of attention :)  So she had so much fun, alternating between being shy and yelling at people, and getting to play with her cousins.  She had started the day in a relatively well-coordinated outfit, but due to a leaky diaper and the discovery of a Halloween costume in the tubs of clothes Ryan's sister brought over for her, she ended up in rainbow-striped pants and butterfly wings.  Naturally :)

[Being shy with my aunt]

  

[Attempting to dribble/steal the ball from cousin Riley]