16 months

I meant to do a "15 month" update on Esther....but now's she's already 16 months!

Our formerly happy-all-the-time, super smiley, friendly girl -- is still all of those things......most of the time. She is starting to demonstrate some serious independence and throws an impressive [loud!] tantrum when things don't go her way :/ Wow. This is sort of new parenting territory for us. The force is strong with this one. She embodies the phrase "sugar and spice" -- she is all kinds of sweet....until she isn't.

Esther has 12 teeth, just missing her 4 eye-teeth (plus, all the big-kid molars). She wears 18-month clothes and size 4 diapers. Her vocabulary is slowly coming. Words include: sit, outside, Da (dadda), waaaah (water), woah, aaaah (avocado), huh-huh (hot),and chip. She also says, "Boo!" when playing peek-a-boo, and will say, "Boom!" when someone drops something or falls down. Even with this limited list of words, she communicates quite effectively by pointing.

Esther is a bit of a climber, and I frequently enter a room to find her on top of something I didn't know she could scale.

Favorites include: baby dolls, being outside, and carrots! Also, anything Jonah and Cora are doing.

Esther has cultivated quite a love of books. Almost daily, I find her in our little book nook, surrounded by piles of books she has flipped through :) She will sit for up to an hour, sometimes, just looking at books. She has even started toting in this little grey step stool we have, so that she has a place to sit - haha!

Within the last few weeks, Esther has suddenly developed pretty bad eczema :( Fortunately, it doesn't seem to bother her one bit - it just looks bad. She is also fortunate that we already have a wide variety of moisturizers to try. She has also joined Cora's daily bath, and things have improved a bit. So thankful it is nothing like Cora's experience with eczema!

Esther is quick to learn routines and loves to be helpful. She is observant and silly and also very cuddly. She is still loving her first two fingers on her left hand. What used to be a sleeping habit is a now almost-constant fixture - left fingers in the mouth, right hand tucked under her chin, squeezing her neck. When I'm holding her, she prefers to grab onto my neck while she sucks on her fingers. She sleeps well - usually 12 hours at night, and an hour/hour and a half, twice a day. What a joy at 16 months!

This is just such a FUN age!!  :)