16 months!

Our little stinker is 16 months old today!

Here's what she's up to this time...

If you remember from Mollie's 15 month update, she was having a reeeeally hard time with teething...it caused all sorts of drama! We've been grateful for a little break from this craziness and have seen a lot more of our sweet little Mollie. She's certainly working on some more teeth at the moment, but it seems to come and go and luckily the drool usually kicks in before the fussiness so we can be prepared :o)

She still has a heightened sensitivity to things, but her easy-going personality is still predominate.

For being SUCH a good eater, can be picky at times. I have learned that she likes something one day and not the next. To help with this, I've started letting Mollie "help" me fix her meal (holding a lid or spoon, pushing buttons on the microwave, etc.) and she becomes way more interested in it and almost never complains when she helps.

Related to the last point, loves to help! While still having a VERY short attention span and limited motor skills, she does a great job of helping pick up toys and put them in something (not always in the right "something", though! hehe), closing door and drawers, holding things for me (diaper rash ointment), etc. The more you offer praise for her efforts, the more she does them. She even signs "thank you" to herself after she does them! Haha!

Pushing boundaries: she will head towards something that's a "no no", look at you, say "no no", and proceed to disobey. The main thing lately has been climbing on the high chair. She starts to climb with a sly little grin on her face and waits to see what we'll do. Boy it wears me out to remain consistent!

Still talking up a storm! Saying more and more words every day, has pretty much added the sign "help" to her vocabulary (although she's still working on it), and is getting better and better at communicating. She still gets very frustrated at times when she can't get her thoughts across, which leads to whining, which drives me crazy, but we'll just keep on encouraging her to use those words appropriately!

Learning to use utensils! When we're at home, we practice a lot using a fork and spoon. In just the last few weeks she's gone from using it as a toy, to putting the right end in her mouth, to putting the right end with food in her mouth, and just today I witnessed her use the fork to stab the food and successfully put it in her mouth! It's still a messy endeavor, but we're making progress!

Her favorite foods right now are raisins, bananas, blackberries, lima beans, chicken fajitas, cheese, yogurt, hot dogs, iced tea (out of my cup!) and eggs. She likes LOTS of other things, but those are the things that she'll really put up a fight for right now!

Loves for us to sing to her. I love this. The ones she wants to hear again and again right now are Old Mcdonald, Itsy Bitsy Spider, and the ABC song. She'll sign "more" after each time and it's so sweet. That will definitely keep us singing to her :o)

Hugging and kissing! She's starting to perfect her hugs by actually using her arms and her kisses by actually smacking her lips! It's not just a big wet slobber anymore. She even has started showing a little boy at the gym some love by giving him a hug and kiss when he leaves...uh oh!

Here are some pics of our little lady! I decided when Mollie was born that I'd take a picture of her each year in her Daddy's shirt then we'd have them to look back at to see how much she's grown. Here are the pics we have so far!

Above: Week 1!

Below: Year 1!