16 Months and We're Moving!

We are moving on Saturday!  We have LOVED our time in Midtown.  The highlight has been walking everywhere:  Botanical Gardens, High Museum, Trader Joe's, Piedmont Park, dry cleaners, Publix,  and the library.  Allie and Harper almost always appreciate a good stroller ride (once I've wrestled them into the stroller) and it has been awesome to get out of the house and be productive running errands on foot.  Living here made me lose the baby weight and the first 16 months have been significantly easier because I could go almost all week without getting in my car.  Buckling two babies in car seats can be a lot of work.

We are really going to miss it here, but decided to move to be closer to our friends from church, Atlanta Westside.  Our close friends the Dutsons will be three houses away!  It will also be really nice to get to the car without going down two flights of stairs or an elevator.  And this will be the first house Michael and I have lived in -- I'm excited to have a back yard and maybe start a garden.

Also, my sister just moved to Atlanta and I could not be more thrilled.  The babies LOVE their T-Lo and her dog, Weezy.  Just one week in and I'm already experiencing the joys of having family close-by. We've even had two nights out without having to pay a sitter!

Allie and Harper are doing new funny things everyday.  They really do get more entertaining each week.

At 15.5 months, Allie was 30.5 inches tall (42nd %ile) and 23 lbs 2 oz (48th %ile), although, she was squirmy getting the height and I'm pretty sure she is taller than Harper.  Her favorite toys are ones you can pull with strings.  She also loves walking around with a mesh laundry basket over her head.   Her laugh is infectious and she is almost always joyful.  She does not, however, like to be woken up from a nap early or when you take something she is holding.  She gets fixated on random things and does not want to loosen her death grip on them. She is very strong.  Her new words are goldfish, bike, duck, Weezy, hot, open, up, baby, keys, and ice.  Real babies are very interesting to her, especially baby Josie Dutson.  This week she also peed on the potty!  (I'm not starting potty training, but let them sit on the potty if it's convenient, and I was so proud of her!  They are both very interested in the potty so maybe I'll start sooner than I think.)  To my dismay, it still takes her 30 minutes to an hour to go to sleep.  The majority of the time she is happy in her crib, but I wish she would cuddle up with her blanket and pass out in less than 5 minutes like her sister.  I dropped the morning nap because it was taking her so long to go to sleep, but I think this is just her style.  I guess she just likes her solitary play time in the crib.  I'm so thankful for the video monitor because at nap time Harper usually goes to sleep and wakes up an hour before Allie, so I can dash in and sneak Harper out before she wakes Allie up.  At her last eye doctor appointment, the doctor noticed for the first time that her droopy eyelid is starting to slightly affect her vision, so we've upped the patching to two hours a day.  Allie has been a great sport about it; she only rips off the patch early one or two days a week.

Harper was 31 inches tall (59th %ile) and 22 lbs. 2 oz (33rd %ile) at 15.5 months.  Harper loves to interact with others and has caught up with Allie on her words.  Because she is by nature more into people, she talks more and seems to always be trying to communicate something.  She had a week or two where she said, "UP!" 40 times a day and held up her hands to be picked up.  She is signing less as she can talk more.  Instead of signing "more" all the time, she says "mama, mama, mama" all the time.  I thought she just wanted a lot of me, but turns out she still just wants more ("mama") of everything.  Her new words are ice, juice, hot, keys, Tee-tee (for T-Lo), CiCi (grandmom), baby, and shoe.  She loves to get shoes out of the closet and bring them to me.  This is very helpful when it is time to get dressed because she knows her crocs from her keds and her church shoes and will bring me the correct pair for her and Allie when I ask her.  She is mama's little helper and I'm constantly amazed what missions she happy toddles off to complete: closing doors, putting away toys, bringing me items, wiping the floor, and putting things in the trash.  Allie knows exactly what I want her to do, but she's not as interested in helping as Harper.  Harper still loves her crib and loves to sleep.  She entertains herself for a good 20 minutes stacking these rings and wearing them as bracelets. These two ladies who have been raised the exact same way could not be more different.  Parents need to give themselves grace (or less credit) on how their kid sleeps, eats, performs, and obeys because to a large extent it's just who they are. 

I'm still missing the morning nap and wish that I had tried to hang onto it a little longer (I dropped it at 14.5 months).  We do have more adventures outside of the house, but miss the extra 1-2 hours to restore order to the house and have personal time.  I'm not planning as much as I did in the evenings because I need that time to do housework and catch up on email, etc.  They go down at 12:45 or 1 and usually only sleep for 1.5-2 hours.  I'm still waiting for it the lengthen out, but they are making up for the sleep with a late wake-up time, sometimes 8:30am.  I guess I can't have it all.

Here are some pictures from the zoo, the bath (they both think it's hilarious when the other one's hair is shampooed into a mohawk), a bath with Lucy, and snack time.