Uh OH......

Well, it has been over 1 month since I last blogged and 4 months since I did a monthly couch update. As Cora would say, "UH OH!". Never fear though. I have taken the photos. I just haven't posted them. In fact, I have 3 drafts that I have started in my blog entries. One draft per month. So, I am just going to throw the last 4 months all into one blog entry. How does that sound?? Sit back (not so far back that you can't see the computer) and enjoy the entry.

18 MONTHS
I am looking for the photos and realized I didn't take an 18 month photo!!! GOOD GRAVY! How could I have forgotten. I do have pictures of her at this age. Just no infamous couch photo. To be quite honest, she didn't change hardly at all between 17 months and 19 months. ;)

19 MONTHS (I will go through the updates at the end).

20 MONTHS

21 MONTHS

WOWSA! There you have it. 4 months of Cora pictures all bundled together in one blog entry.  Now it is time for the list.

• Cora has all but given up signing. Her speaking skills are so great. She communicates so well for a 1.5+ year old. I am shocked. I honestly thought we were all going to be using signs until she was nearly 3! Uhhh, guess not. She is already using 2 and 3 word "sentences". For example, "too tight", "it hurt", "let me see", "I can", "no way", "oh gosh", "love you",  the list goes on and on. The first time I heard her say "too tight", we were at the children's clothing store trying on jeans. She looked at me and said, "Toooooo tight. No way!" I couldn't believe it. Of course, now all of her pants are too tight. She prefers dresses and other loose fitting clothes. Quite frankly, she is probably telling the truth about her pants being tight because she still has a huge baby belly.
• She now has 16 teeth. She had two canines cut through right after she turned 17 months. The other two came closer to 18 months. She still has one set of molars left (2 on top and 2 on bottom). I am expecting those some time around her 2nd birthday. In the meantime, I am floating around in non-teething ecstasy.
• She is sleeping much better these days. She wakes up sometime around 6:30 and 7:00 in the morning and goes to bed around 8:30. She still has a ~3 hour nap in the afternoon. She loves her bed. She is still quite sensitive to any sort of developmental change in her life. She goes through clingy stages where she comes into our bed and wants to sleep with us. We don't turn her away because we know she'll go back to sleeping on her own eventually. Right now, she is having one of her spells. I will always wonder what wakes her in the middle of the night.
• She loves to sing and dance. It is so much fun watching her cut a rug in the living room. She belts out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and The Wheels on the Bus whenever her heart decides it is time to sing. I love her loud lungs.
• She has recently moved into the toddler room at daycare. She is once again one of the youngest kids. Most kids are between the ages of 2 and 3. She has adapted very well and very quickly. She is the defiant one. Always doing things just a bit different than all the other kids. During her first week, I sat back and observed without her knowing I was there. The door to her room has a window that I could watch through. There are 10 kids in her room. At that time, they were all sitting on a mat, cross legged, and listening intently to Ishrat tell a story. Well, 9 of them were. Cora on the other hand was off the mat, laying horizontal to the other kids, looking upward, but still seemed to be very interested in the story. It was a classic Cora moment.
• She had her first black eye. It was horrible. I was going to post a picture, but I couldn't look at it. I posted one on facebook right after it happened. I figure that's enough for now. She was sitting on a chair at the kitchen table and fell off hitting her face on the corner of the table. Poor thing.
• She will sit through a Disney movie! I pulled out my old 13" TV one miserable, rainy week this summer. We have some old Disney VHS movies that were once Lee's. I decided to pop one in and see if Cora would watch it. Sure enough, she loves them. Works for me! We still haven't let her watch Dora, Barney, or any other stupid little kid show that would require me to pop a couple pills just to get through. We have a retro toon station that plays all the old classics from my day. We watch that station in the morning. :)
• She now weighs about 28.5 lbs, she is 34ish" long (I think), and wears a toddler size 7 shoe. She seems to be a really tall girl compared to the other kids at daycare. I am interested to see how big she is compared to her cousins, Max and Mya.
• She has a potty seat! Most of the toddlers in her daycare are potty training or are potty trained. She likes to sit on the potty at daycare (with her pants on) like the older kids. Lee and I bought her a potty chair that snaps onto a regular toilet and a step stool to get up to it. For a week now she has looked at but will not sit on it. Tonight, she sat on it with and without a diaper on! Progress. I am in no hurry to potty train. In fact, daycare may just potty train for me. We've even talked about having her friend, Claire, come over to show her how. Cora will do anything Claire does, and Claire is now officially toilet trained. 

That's about all I have for her monthly updates. I have lots more to blog about including Cora's first, second, and third camping trips, her trips to Toronto and NYC, and so many other little things. Stay tuned. :)