Walking Baby! (17 months old)

Once again, I suck at updates.  The little Empress tends to change very fast, and it is kinda hard to keep up.

 

We are now up to 7 teeth, with the 8^th one pushing its way through.  Teething is a very odd thing from the parental point of view.  I would expect it to be painful all the time and then just stop after the teeth come through, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Zoe gets occasional moodiness, punctuated here and there by bouts of crying or anger.  It always takes a while before you can identify what is wrong unless she manages to tell you.

 

Zoe is now walking as well.  The impetus for her to start walking was the desire to carry large objects.  Smaller things would fit in her mouth, but for large objects she needed her hands.  Thus she learned to walk. J  That’s my kid.  She can walk and fast walk, allowing her to cover disturbing amounts of distance at a moment’s notice.  She is very sturdy on her feet, though not always attentive.  She has a tendency to watch other things while continuing her forward motion.  This has lead to a number of entertaining mishaps, usually involving walls.  At day care she takes baby yoga, which has given her a couple of yoga poses that she does for fun on occasion, and also the ability to squat down while leaving her feet flat on the floor.

 

Empress Zoe has continued her independence streak, and still much prefers to do things when she can.  She walks with us around the house, many times leading the way to the places we tell her to go.  She knows what she wants, and can live up to the redhead stereotype when denied her desires.  She is getting tall as well, which means the day we have feared has arrived.  On her tippy-toes, she can reach the door handles.  This wouldn’t be so bad, but we have the lever-style door handles, which means that she can open them just by pulling down on them.  This means we need to determine which doors to baby-proof, and determine how to keep her out of the areas we don’t want her to go.  So much fun.

 

Zoe understands complex requests (ex: Zoe, please get your shoes and take them to mama) when she feels like it and pays attention.  She really enjoys her shoes, specifically the taking off of them.  We recently went up another shoe size (again) to 6, and had Zoe war her new shoes.  They were a little big, so we asked one of the teachers at daycare if they had noticed her having any problems with her shoes.  Their response was ‘Nope.  She took them off and started chewing on her socks like she usually does.’  That’s my kid. J

 

The Empress is working on her words.  She still tends to truncate or mis-pronounce most of them, but she is working on it.  She can also now identify her nose, mouth, and eyes.  We are still working on ears. J  She is also very polite, adding please to most things or just saying please if she doesn’t know how to convey what she wants.  It is very adorable, and totally won over Grandma when visiting for Aunt Lisa’s graduation.  She also very much wants to help with the chores, by putting her cup away after food, picking up things from the floor she doesn’t think belong there, and such similar.  It is really awesome, and now if only her parents could learn to do the same things.

 

That’s it for now.  I will try to load another update much sooner rather than later. J