17 months

(written on 6/7/09, just not posted till later)

At 17 months, our little girl is not so little anymore. She had her last ever bottle on 5/30/09, and she started taking her first steps on her own on 5/21/09. She kept it up, taking between one and three steps at a time for a few days but then completely stopped trying to take any steps at all. For about two weeks, there was nothing, then she started taking 4 to 5 steps at a time on 6/6/09. She would only do that one or twice, though, and then it was back to crawling for the rest of the day. I still get to call her my baby instead of my toddler since she still isn't walking, right? :) The best part of her age, though, is that she FINALLY calls me Mama instead of Dada. Yeah, I really do have my own identity!!! :)

Samantha still lacks her bottom 2 eye teeth, and boy are those tough teeth! We have learned to give her Tylenol before bed most nights in order to help her be able to sleep through the night. She loves her baby dolls and even feeds them a bottle. She pretends to be a dog and cralws around the floor barking when she does so. She wants to throw her own diaper away after we change it, and she gets mad if someone else throws it away instead.

She has several signs including more, please, hurt, baby, milk, eat and all done. She also nods her head for yes and shakes her head for no (and usually does the one she actually means) Samantha also has many more words, so many that I can't even come up with all of them, but the ones I can remember include Hi, Dada, Mama, baby, please, thank you, fishie, dog (although she will usually just bark rather than say the wrod dog), hot, uhoh, book and cracker.

Her favorite game is playing with Daddy on the bed. He lays on his back and she climbs up on top of his tummy, bounces a couple of times then throws herself off and giggles hysterically. She will do this over and over and over...the only problem is that she doesn't quite understand that this is only a game to play with Daddy and will try to bounce on my tummy, too. Ouch!

Once more we are grateful for another month with our sweet little one, and we enjoy every day with her.