Friday, July 6, 2012

Aurora - Sixteen Months



Aurora 's language skills have exploded this month.  We bought her some flashcards for the plane to Anguilla and she can identify almost all of them.  She also knows the sounds for most of the animals we can think of and is naming objects in her surroundings as well. 


While we were in Anguilla, Dadda taught Aurora how to say adventure, which comes out more like "Abee-da" for stroller rides.  Now it is one of her absolute favorite words.


While on vacation we also gave everyone in Matt's family a name, and she loves to play the "do you remember" game where we ask her if she remembers each member of the family and she excitedly repeats the name back to us.



She still loves being sung to, and now claps and says "yayyyy" at the end of every song.  It's pretty funny.



She also loves dancing, and her dancing is evolving from just bopping her head to the beat into dancing around in little circles.  Is it sad that Matt and I could watch her do that for hours?


She is developing more and more of an opinion.  She is starting to want to take off and explore while we are out and then gets super cranky when we tell her she has to stay and hold our hand.  





Now that she is getting more steady on her feet she is exploring speed.  She thinks it is really fun to get two hands to hold, lean into them and move her feet as fast as possible in a sort of supported run.


Sleep is going downhill again.  Early in the month she was having a hard time falling asleep at night, sometimes not until 7:30pm or so.  I don't think she isn't tired, I guess maybe she just needs a little alone time to unwind?  In Anguilla she was going to bed around 7:30pm without too much difficulty (except the stress of a new room which is to be expected) but did develop the wonderful habit of waking up around 5:20/5:30am...


Naps were getting a little longer for a few days but are now back to averaging about an hour.  Very recently we have been having some success, however, with going to her when she first starts to stir and rocking her back to sleep for another 20-30 minutes.