Coraline is 17 months old, just shy of 1-and-a-half. I feel like this month, or last month, or somewhere in between, she became a kiddo and not the baby. She wants to do everything the big kids are doing, from playing in the bouncers, to riding on the power vehicle toys.

Just like Jameson, this month we turned the corner with the blocks. She still loves to toss them and throw them off, but she’s now trying to stack them, as he did as well. She is also loving flipping the light switches with her pointer finger steadily out to flick it off. She loves putting toys in things, from the fake “coins” in the bank, to balls in a cup and opening and closing lids.

She knows where her nose, eyes, ears, and belly button are. We ask her to point to noses and belly buttons. Belly buttons are fun, particularly on mommy and daddy. She loves getting kissed on the cheeks, and I feel like Coraline giggles all the time. Everything is funny right now for her! There is some learning here about taking that delight with us on a day to day basis, and a certainly wish I had her attitude most days (of course, we all have days that aren’t quite as delightful!).

She isn’t delighted with diaper changes though. She currently hates them.

Coraline has started using the spoon and fork, and seemed an old pro at it as soon as we gave them to her. We gave them to her a while back with little success and just tried it again later. I am not certain if she was using them already at daycare, or maybe she already has some great fine motor skills, but she did great and tries to use them pretty consistently. She also loves to wash her hands, scrubbing them together all by herself.

Oh, and she enjoys corn on the cob (she likes to suck on the cob to get all the corn juice out.) Coraline has all her baby teeth, except for her 2 year molars, as far as I can tell. All the eye teeth, and the very slow missing bottom front teeth are all finally popped in. With her full set of chompers, she eats most everything, even eat raw carrots. She likes to try and eat off our plates. She has even eaten eggs, something that Jameson never liked and still doesn’t today. Coraline is not a fan of zucchini though, and depending on the day will refuse food she liked the day prior. Life of a toddler.

However, we are not doing so great with milk. We are still giving Coraline a morning and evening bottle with her milk in it. She simply refuses milk during the day (and if we manage to actually get her to taste it since she is already very suspicious of anything that doesn’t look like water, she’ll push it away). We still offer it occasionally, but have come to the conclusion that until we can reason with her to sit and drink a cup of milk during meal times as we do with Jameson, she will not drink milk from a sippy. And, for some time, we’ll just continue the bottle.

And speaking of bottles, Coraline has a slew of new words including bottle, water (sometimes), “moooo”, “peep peep”, and a fabulous “rooooar” that lions, tigers and bears all make. Coraline also finally has a very distinct “mommy” word! I know I’ve heard mama and dada, but now it’s a very clear “mommy”. Today, she repeated after Brian saying “Hi Mommy”. I do believe I have a little bit of a mommy’s girl right now, and that’s quite fine with me, since daddy already has a daddy’s boy 😉

She has quite a few intentional-sounding words that start with “ba” which seem to mean bottle, ball, that, and more. But she is definitely trying to communicate to us and will follow simple directions when she wants to (like let’s take a bath and get shoes on, because those are fun things)

Coraline is a pro-walker now! She strides through grass without problems, and comes to mommy to kiss away her boo boos. She snuggles up for hugs, and seems more physically affectionate than rambunctious Jameson was. She’s on the move as well though, doing a lot of climbing stairs and up the steps to go down slides.

And now she loves to swing as well! She likes to say “weeeee” for swings and slides, and “bye bye” with a little wave to everyone in a car (power wheels or not, family or not).

Bedtime is adorable. Coraline now brushes her teeth (with assistance). I use that time to brush her wild tangled mop of hair she has, since that is the only time she will sit or stand still. I don’t want to cut bangs for her, but she pulls barrettes out of her hair so they frequently fall across her eyes. It doesn’t seem to bother her though. Then we read stories and have her bottle.

Coraline simply loves books and has refused milk at bedtime to read books instead. Until I tell her there are no more stories, at which point she’ll drink some before snuggling up in her crib. Her favorite books are Doggies, and a flip book with farm animals.

I’ve been singing the Baby Beluga Book to her recently which she and Jameson both enjoy. Jameson likes to sit on my “other” lap when we read this, and sometimes it’s in the morning, because Coraline insists on a book in the morning after morning bottle too.

This is my favorite face of hers, with her scrunched up nose.