I look back a couple months, and it’s hard to believe this girl wasn’t walking then. Now, she’s climbing onto the couch, chairs, stools, and play equipment. She’s 30 inches tall and 21 pounds, following her curve and happy and healthy.

We did have her iron levels checked after they were low a few months ago, but vitamins have remedied that. However, we did find that the tube in her ear, the only one left after the other came out early, is sideways. We did have one eardrum rupture a few weeks ago, the first in about 6 months, that probably caused it. We are hoping that we can get through the winter without putting them in again, though.

We transitioned this month to no bottles, almost literally the day we came back from the doctor’s (at his almost aggressive insistence). She was almost ready herself anyway, and it happens that she’s now drinking some milk from the sippy during the day at school, though not much for us at home unless it’s dinner time. She was a little cranky in the mornings, until we realized she was hungry, and now she’s pretty happy until we get downstairs and demands something to eat (usually a baby food pouch). More breakfast comes later at school, and she’s a little snack monster. This girl eats as much as Jameson does, if not more so since she’s not (quite) as picky as him yet.

We also got rid of the changing table, putting it in the closet as shelving space, in favor of this adorable seat and bookcase. She seems to like it, and I try to have her bedtime routine include picking out her own book. Coraline is still a fan of the “burp cloths” which we now call her blankies, and the more the merrier! But otherwise she hasn’t shown any attachment to dolls or stuffed animals beyond commenting what they were. She does like her glow worm, and we had to turn it back on the sample music so that it didn’t run for so long since it was keeping her awake!

Coraline is clapping for mommy’s songs, and singing herself. She loves to try and seeing “Bringing home a baby bumble bee” and “Baby Beluga”. We also have a night night song for her, which she also sings to herself. She names all faces “baby” and “mommy” (even daddy was mommy for a while, which is slowly changing). I kind of loved it.

My favorite of her words is “no” because she says it with such little person attitude even when she really means yes. She says it to almost all questions, even when we’re not talking to her, which cracks me up. Some new words this month were “balloon”, “puppy”, “up” and “nice”. I also like “nice” since she drags out the “niiiiiice” and pets dogs, brother, mommy’s hair, everyone as she says it. We had to reinforce it to avoid some hitting we had going on, and she really took to it.

I love “up” which comes out “upbah”. She also will say “more” with the addition of the hand sign, and “all done” which comes out more like “alduh” with the hand sign. She also imitates a lot of words we say that I haven’t heard her repeat much independently, like “rain”. She strings together two words on occasion, most frequently “hi mommy” in her adorable little grin. Coraline seems like she may have a word for Jameson that may be derived from “brother”, but I’m not certain yet. She certainly talks about buba, and also bobby a lot. We’re not really sure what these words mean, but she will chatter nonstop, convinced that we understand everything she’s saying.

We really adore this stage, when everything and everyone is thrilling to her and she is beginning to occupy herself, talk to us, and respond. Coraline is so fun to play with! I can just say that I’m a little bummed summer is ending since she is full swing of running and playing and climbing outside.