18 months

So, today Gwen is 18 months old. When people ask how old Gwen is I can officially say 1.5 yrs. We have been battling sicknesses and food strikes for the last couple of days which has made life not so fun in the last couple of weeks. We had some of the kids over from SS yesterday, everyone seemed to have a good time. Gwen was remarkably well behaved since everyone was touching her stuff! She didn't get mad or pick fights...I was so proud! She did start to lose it toward the end, she was starting to get hungry and kept leading me into the kitchen and trying to get in her high chair. I gave her a banana to tide her over and that worked well. I think she also wanted to be in the kitchen because no one else was in there but us, and that was just fine for her. It is a little overwhelming to have 11 kids running around, ok so 4 of them are not mobile, but Gwen is not used to having that many guests over.

So, what is new with Gwen these days, she is becoming very charming, she likes to wave at people and she will "talk" to people she knows. She is very good with the baby signs and is using more intelligible words, which is nice. We are still working on context though. She knows that when we go up the stairs she says up, but lately she has been saying up also for going down the stairs. I don't know if that is because she associates stairs with up, because she crawls up those by herself (without any help) and often gets distracted, when it is cold outside and I have stuff in my hands I work hard to keep her on task by saying up up up.

She definitely has likes and dislikes and doesn't mind telling you what she wants or needs. Her baby signs are improving everyday. She is so cute when she does the signs and is so expressive. One of these days when she starts talking we are going to be sorry.

The food strike appears to be over, for a little while. I still need to figure out how to get her to try new things, which she so politely hands new foods back to me. I am trying a new experiment with the eating, I will let you know how it goes at the end. We have a Dr's appt next week so we will see how she is doing based on other babies her age. I think she will only have 1 shot this visit, so we are looking forward to that!

Next week we are also starting swim lessons. That should be super exciting! Ok, so I have no idea how she will react to the water and I am not looking forward to being in a bathing suit at any stage of the pregnancy nor do I have a bathing suit that will likely fit and class starts Tues. AH! One of my friends also scheduled for the class said I should wear a 2 piece. Not likely! I have only worn a 2 piece once in public, and that was on my honeymoon.

No pictures or videos with this post. I have been trying to post a video for over an hour and it hasn't worked out, maybe I will post some pictures later, like in the next couple of days, but it seems that I will never get that video posted. Sorry!