Aliana turned 15 months old on September 15. She is such a big girl now, and I cannot believe she is a toddler. The past couple months have been huge milestones because she is now running, sleeping on her own, off the bottled, formula, and so much more. Recently I posted a video on our youtube channel, mama bird and tribe, of Aliana’s updates, but more changes had happened since then.
We got Aliana to stop using a bottle. It took her a full day to accept the new sippy cup. We tried several types of cups for her water and milk. She prefers to drink water from a straw sippy cup and milk from the stainless steel sippy cup. She usually isn’t a picky girl, but she is with milk. We noticed she drinks less milk after a few days off the bottle. Her water intake increased a lot too. I am glad that this is happening, so we do not have to worry too much about bringing milk with us when we leave the house. She is okay with drinking water throughout the day when she is thirsty. However, before she takes a nap and going to bed at night, she prefers to have milk.
We cannot believe how much Aliana understands at this young age. I tell her something, and she responds right away because she knows what I am telling her. The best part is she can communicate back to us through sign and some speaking words. She now shakes her head “no” and says no when she does not want something that I offer her. Her way of telling us “yes” is by giggling and shaking her head yes. Her sign language has been improving every week. We just finished our last sign language class. After six months of classes, I got a lot of the actions Aliana, and I do on a daily. If we need to freshen up, we can always look online for the sign. Thank God for Google these days.
She started to talk more. Some of the words she says are milk, mama, no, close, more, dada, bottle, star, one, and cup. Also, she knows some animals sounds such as woof, meow, and moo. Every day I am always encouraging her to talk. If she is comfortable, she will try.
Learning her body parts. I will ask her the question, “where is your?” and go through all of her body parts from head to toe. She knows her head, arm, nose, mouth, tongue, legs, feet. I am avoiding her ears because of her piercings. Aliana is brilliant. Sometimes she will get lazy and point to her nose as her mouth.
Counting from one to three. Aliana knows how to count with her fingers. My mother taught her this when she was ten months old, and she got it in the first hour. I try to do this with her every day so she will not forget.
Loves to try using utensils to eat. I have a couple of sets of kids cutlery for her to play. Now she tries to stab her food with the fork. She will balance her food on the spoon, and shoves them in her mouth. Sometimes she will get her grapes and balance the grapes on the spoon as she walks. She has excellent coordination already.
She throws objects and can kick a ball very well. We have small beach balls she loves to kick around the house or in the backyard. I think we have a little soccer player in the making. Her dad loves to play soccer so we cannot wait to teach her the game. When there are dogs around, she likes to find their ball and throw the ball for them to fetch. She also loves to draw. We have a water doodle mat for her to draw on. Every time she picks up the water pen I lay out the mat for her to draw. She comes up with so many exciting drawings.
She signs to go outside all the time and loves to explore everything she can touch and see. Some of her favorite activities to do is collect rocks, pick up sticks, dig in the dirt/sand, pick flowers, watch the airplanes pass by, water the plants, take a ride in her car as we push her around the house, and go swimming in our pool. At this age, she is so curious about our world. Everything is something to point at.
Her favorite time is bath time. Every time I make the sign to take a bath, Aliana gets super excited and walks straight to her bathtub. She then throws all the bath toys she can reach around the tub in the water and starts to take off her clothes. Her favorite toys are cups to gather water and the toy faucet that collects the bathtub water and runs like a faucet. I never take her out of the bathtub before she finishes. I wait for her to make the sign “all done” before I take her out. If we take her out before she finishes, she gets so upset.
I will find her reading books by herself. She will go to her bookshelf and grab a few books. After opening some pages, I can hear her babble to herself as if she was reading. We have a few picture books that are fun to teach her more signs of animals, objects, and colors. Before she sleeps, we like to read her books that have a lot of words, vibrant pictures, and a long story. She loves to point and sometimes giggle at some of the photos.
Her appetite increased since she is not drinking as much milk as before. This little girl is always snacking on something every hour. Her favorite fruits are grapes, oranges, watermelon, blueberries, and pears. She also loves cheese crackers, cheese, seaweed, homemade pouched juices, kids crackers, kids protein bars, fish, sausage, peas, macaroni, kids pancakes, kids waffles, spaghetti, brown rice, baked fries, hummus, chicken. I try not to feed her a lot of carbs or foods that don’t have any nutritional value to her diet. We also try to give her high fiber foods throughout the day because her stools have been hard the past couple of months.
Throwing fits on a daily basis. If Aliana is displeased with something, a tantrum comes. I am trying to break this bad habit now. She needs to learn that throwing tantrums will not get her what she wants. So we try to ignore her fits most of the time and have her work it out on her own. Now we know when she fakes her cries. Honestly, I find it amusing when she has a tantrum because it is super cute even when she is mad. The tantrums do not last that long anymore and I try to talk it out with her every time she does has an episode. When we tell her everything is okay and tell her why we said “no’ most of the time she calms herself down pretty quickly.
Aliana is a mommy’s girl! She always tries to find me if I am not within eyesight. When we are out, she will turn to me to pick her up or always run towards me. The words that always come out of her mouth is mama. Her kisses are the best, and now she gives me long big hugs every day. I am cherishing all these moments because one day she is going to be a teenager and might not want me the way that she does now. I love exploring the world through her and every day is always fun and exciting for us both.
