16 months

Happy Sixteen Months, Shelby-girl!
And I hate to toot my own horn, but I will anyways. ;) I was looking back through Shelby's monthly posts, and I realized this is the first time since Shelby turned 3 months old that I have actually managed to get her monthly post up on the 17th..so I am quite proud of myself for accomplishing this in a timely manner for once! {But if I'm being completely honest, the only reason I have it done today is b/c Derek came home for the day yesterday, so I had to do the photo shoot then b/c it is literally impossible to take a decent photo of Miss Shelby these days without an entertainer on hand..ha!}
Sorry all of these pics aren't the best quality...I realized when we were done taking photos that I had left my flash off the entire time..ugh!

We might be seeing some new teeth pop up soon b/c Shelby's fingers are always in her mouth these days!

Here is what Miss Shelby is up to these days...

--You are now taking a flinstone vitamin (cut in half) daily. You didn't love it at first, but now you do! You take it every morning right after your bottle so we don't forget. Since you aren't a good eater, it makes me feel so much better now that you take a daily multi-vitamin!
--You are still sleeping GREAT at night and doing wonderfully with only taking one long afternoon nap.
--You are still a very picky eater! You take 3 bottles of whole milk mixed with Benefiber a day (8oz first thing in the morning, 6oz after your nap, and 8oz before bed...but you would drink WAY more if we let you!). You pretty much eat the.exact.same.thing.every.single.day for meals. For breakfast, you eat a Yoplait yogurt or pureed fruit along with some of Mommy's cereal (Shredded Wheat or Cracklin' Oat Bran--for a picky eater, I can't believe you like these cereals!). For lunch, you have a pureed veggie, half of a banana, and some goldfish. For your afternoon snack (when you wake up from nap), you have a Gerber granola bar. For dinner, you eat another pureed veggie, a Gerber snack (ie. apple wheels), and the crust of wheat sandwich bread (again, weird that a picky eater would only like crust!). During meals & snacktime (and throughout the day), you drink water from a sippy cup. For "dessert" after some of your meals, you eat Gerber yogurt melts. You think those are like candy..you would eat an entire bag of those in one sitting if we let you!
--Also related to eating, you are finally cooperating again when we spoon-feed you! Hallelujah! You went through a phase last month where you would not tolerate being fed your yogurt or baby food in your high chair, which wasn't an option for us since you don't eat fruits & veggies otherwise and can't spoon-feed yourself yet. But for whatever reason, we figured out that you would eat from a spoon as long as you were "cruising" around the kitchen! Weird! It wasn't always easy hitting a moving target with a spoon full of food, but I figured you were getting the nutrients you needed and also working on your walking...so it was a win-win-lose! {The lose part of that combo was the mess I had to clean up, but the wins outweighed the losses!} But I am thrilled to say that you are finally cooperating and eating all of your meals within the confines of your high chair..you still don't love it, but you tolerate it!
--You are really enjoying playing outside these days!
--At your evaluation for Early Intervention a couple of weeks ago, one of the questions they asked me was if you could crawl up stairs. I promptly answered that you could not, but the more I kept thinking about it I really didn't know if it was something you could or couldn't do b/c you had never shown any interest nor was it something that I thought I was "supposed to" teach you. That afternoon when we got home, I put you in front of the stairs and you just stared at them like you had no clue what I wanted you to do. So I showed you how to crawl up the first stair, and after that you zoomed up the rest of the stairs in no time at all! I was quite proud!
--You are pretty much at same stage in the walking department as you were last month. You will stand for a few seconds on your own and get really proud of yourself, but you don't really show interest in taking steps on your own. You'd rather play it safe and sit down to scoot or crawl to get anywhere. But you have taken 1-3 unsteady steps a couple of times on your own! You still do well walking if you are holding both of our hands, but you are getting better with only holding one hand.
--You have really started to enjoy your walker toys this month. Up until now, they have frustrated you b/c the wheels would go faster than your little feet could keep up. But now you are a pro! We keep one of your walkers as your "outside" toy and the other one stays inside the house, and you love them now! When we go outside to use your walker, I carry you in one arm and the walker in the other hand until we get down to the sidewalk {I usually don't like for you to push the walker down the driveway b/c it's a downhill slope, and it goes too fast for you}, and you pitch a fit until I put you down to do it by yourself!
--This month, you started the Early Intervention program called "First Steps."
--You are not a very lovey, cuddly type of baby, but we taught you how to hug this month...and you will sometimes comply when we ask for a hug...but only sometimes! ;)
--I don't know if we can call it your first "official" word or not, but you can now say "baby!" We have a bunch of family pictures on our stairwell, and whenever we go up or down the stairs with Shelby we often stop and point out family members in pictures and say their names to Shelby. Whenever we point to a picture of her in a picture, we always say "baby" or "Shelby." Well, one day we pointed to a picture of her and said "baby," and she repeated it! She did it again several times over the next couple of days, and we kept positively reinforcing it. Well, don't you know that pretty soon every single person we pointed to in a picture soon became "baby"...and now, if we point to any frame (even if there's not a picture of a person in the frame, Shelby says "baby." So apparently baby and frame are synonymous...who knew?!
--This seems strange, but one of your favorite things to do to comfort yourself is put something close to your eye. When you are getting ready for bed, you like to keep your pacifier or your Wubbanub by your eye...it's so weird, but we think it's the cutest thing! {You started to get fussy towards the end of our photo shoot, so we gave you your pacifiers...and you immediately did this!}


--This month, whenever we finished reading a book or whenever you closed a book after playing with it, you would throw your hands up in the air as if to say "all done." Now whenever we say "all done," you often put your hands up in the air automatically. When we said we were all done with pictures, you immediately put your hands up as if you agreed!