Our Canadian Cuties: Sixteen Going On Seventeen

Cora turned 17 months old yesterday. I am loving each and every day with her more and more. She has such a great personality. I should thank Lee for that one. She is learning new things every day. It has been the best 17 months of my life just watching her grow and experience life.

Such a serious little girl!!

There's the smile!

I have a lot of close up pictures like the one shown. She is always trying to touch the camera while I am taking pictures. To me, her face is as sweet as sugar, so I love the close ups.

Are you ready for the list? If not, get ready. Because here it comes.

She correctly identified her first wild animal (of course this is a big deal to Lee and me). She saw the ducks on a near by pond, pointed and signed duck. I about jumped out of my socks from excitement. Now, she is sure to point out all ducks for a crazy Mom reaction.
She has a total of 12 teeth. All her molars are in (thank goodness). Her gums are very swollen where her canines are. I am guessing those will pop through any time. She has been a bit fussy and hasn't had much of an appetite that last couple days. Those are very good signs of new teeth. I never thought I'd get excited about her teeth coming in. We are almost to the end of this road now, so I say The More the MERRIER! After her canines, she has one more set of molars. And then the awful days of teething are over! Hallelujah!
Speaking of teething, I have mentioned that she must not have any pain tolerance whatsoever. Turns out, I am wrong...again. Today she wiped out on the cement. She laid there for just a second before getting up. I didn't run to her. Instead, I just watched to see what would happen. She brushed herself off, gave a little whine (kind of like OUCH in baby language), and then went back to playing. It wasn't until we got home that she has a big ol' scuff on one knee and a little scratch on the other knee. There was even a little bit of blood! I am very proud to say, my daughter is not a pansy! She is a tough little cookie. But, that must mean that teething is about 100X worse for pain than I could have ever imagined. Ugh.
She is sleeping pretty well in her own toddler bed! See previous post for an update. She woke up at 4:55am today. We are getting close to her being back to her old schedule of 5:30-6am wake up time. This transition has been much easier than I had expected. She was obviously ready.
She is developing an opinion. I often give her a choice of two things and let her pick. Examples would be two different shirts, two books, two drinks, etc. She really understands what she is choosing (most of the time) because she takes her time to think about what she actually wants. The first time I gave her the choice of two books to read and asked her to pick one, it took her at least 30 seconds of looking, sighing, and sticking out her bottom lip in concentration before she finally made a choice. The only down fall is, she'll stop me if I'm reading a book she doesn't want to hear. She'll close my book and then hand me the one she wants. Sometimes I try to sneak a new book into the lineup out of pure boredom for myself. Oh well. It is HER bedtime story after all. Lee laughs at me in the morning because I can actually read a handful of her books with my eyes closed. I view this as multitasking. I can sort of sleep for a few more minutes even while entertaining Cora. :)
We bought a new scale to weigh ourselves. According to our scale, Cora weighs between 26 and 27 lbs. She is a tank! She definitely still has "baby fat", but she never was a really roly poly baby. I am pretty sure she carries most of her weight in her belly. She is sprouting like a weed though. I swear she gets taller every other week.
How could I forget this one?? She is trying to sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star". Sooo sweet.

New words and signs

This is going to be a pretty short list because Cora has decided to only communicate via words and signs on a very minimal level. She has instead resorted to barking. In fact, she even sometimes eats without using her hands. She really thinks she is a dog.Yes, this is quite cute. Wait, scratch that. I WAS quite cute. I don't understand Dog. She thinks she does. I spend more time telling Reggie to stop crying and Cora to stop barking. How backwards is that?
Fish (sound like ish) She also does the sign.
I swear today she said "I can". I asked her if she needed help by holding my hand. She shook her head No and said, "I can". Alrighty, then. I guess Lee and I say, "Cora can do this" and variants of that pretty much all the time.
Bird. She does the sign for this and says chirp, chirp. (sounds like shurh, or shuh. She doesn't always get the "r" sound in there.

Poor Reg. She wants to be next to him all the time. He is so great with her. I am still shocked about how tolerant he is considering how snobby/pouty/sulkish he can be.

Her smile gets me every single time. That smile is going to get her out of sticky situations throughout her life. She already knows this.

I put this picture up for a glimpse of her pouty lip. It can be way more pronounced. I just don't normally have a camera when she is really sticking the bottom lip out.

I am pretty sure she was telling me to quite taking pictures of her. She has better things to do than pose for my monthly photo shoot.

I then threatened her with an early bed time and no dessert. No, not really. But I think these two photos really show just how great her hair is. Her hair is amazing.