Finishing The Race: FFF: Karis Grace 12-16 months

Here is a much over-due update on my sweet Karis Grace. As I type, she's about to be 17 months, so this update is covering from around the 12 month mark to the 16 month mark... and a lot has happened in this little one's life!!

Eating- Karis is doing a great job eating table food these days. She eats 3 meals per day with an additional afternoon snack on most days. At each meal/snack, she gets a cup of milk, which she is doing well with (though we still hold it for her when she drinks). Her breakfast is usually cut up pieces of fruit (grapes, strawberries, peaches, etc.); lunch is typically cooked veggies, also cut up (peas, carrots, green beans, etc.); and dinner is almost always black beans and sometimes a little dessert. Snack often consists of yogurt or graham crackers or cheerios. She was really struggling with constipation a few months back, but the black beans (and also maybe the yogurt, which promotes good gut health) have pretty much fixed that issue. So far there isn't much that Karis doesn't like to eat. As she gets more teeth, we'll continue expanding her diet. (And I'll note that she is also officially weaned, which happened without much fuss when she was about 16 months old.)

chomping on a carrot while Mama preps for dinner

Sleeping- Sweet Girl typically gets 2 naps per day, one starting around 9:30 and the other starting around 2. Neither are especially long yet (45-75 min on average), but she has learned to play contentedly in her crib after the morning nap and sometimes after the afternoon one as well. Bedtime is usually around 6:30 or 7, and she wakes up around 7 or 7:30 in the morning (though she often plays and talks in her crib until 8 when I have breakfast on the table). We've recently had to re-sleep-train her, as she had become quite accustomed to being rocked to sleep. Now our nap/bed time routine is to change her diaper, turn on her fan, read a story, and sing a few lines of 'Amazing Grace' to her before laying her down awake in her crib. This has been going well, and she is consistently able to fall asleep by herself (unless something crazy happens like a poopy or one of her limbs getting caught between the crib slats). However, just this month we've realized that she is quite confident that ONLY mama can perform said routine, and no one else will do. So we are (again) re-sleep-training her a bit so that daddy can also put her to bed.

Sleeping in the big crib now that Enoch has a big boy bed!

Size- These days Karis fits into 12-18 month clothes. (Her legs are long, needing a 18 mos size in pants, but her waist is small, needing more like a 9 mos size...) She wears a size 3 or 4 in shoes, and she's about to jump to a size 4 in diapers. She technically lost a few pounds around the 12 month mark, but we've been diligently adding them back on with all that food she's now consuming. At her 15 month doctor check up, she weighed 17.5 pounds and was 28.5 inches tall (both hitting around the 25th - 30th percentiles on her charts).

Playing- Karis' number one choice when it comes to playing is still Enoch. She can't get enough of the boy! When they're both awake, playing usually consists of them sitting together in the floor and entertaining one another (my main job is keeping them nice and gentle). Sometimes he even reads to her, which she thinks is just grand. :-D When Enoch is napping, I have mama-Karis time for 1-2 hours. On any given day, we play a little, do some at-home therapy, and sometimes a few of my chores. Karis is not quite able to entertain herself when Enoch isn't around, but I think that skill will come soon, especially as she learns how to interact with her toys more. Speaking of toys, these days Karis is more interested in her toys, specifically ones she can pick up and throw. ;) Her favorite toys right now are blocks, rings from a ring stacker, Enoch's Thomas trains, and board books. She also loves being tickled, and she really enjoys one on one attention from Mama or Daddy.

Enoch & Karis playing together while Mama cleans the kitchen.

Developmental Milestones- Here are a few notable milestones:

scooting around in circles or backward on her bottom
standing a little (we practice standing everyday, twice a day with a standing frame that our PT is allowing us to borrow. It basically gives her enough support to allow her to stand 20 min without getting too tired. Our goal is 30 minutes.)
pushing up from laying on her back, onto her side, and then into sitting
giving kisses and hugs
giving toys to people when asked to "give"
putting toys into a container/bucket when asked to "put in"
turning pages in a board book when asked to "turn the page"
learning to touch animal pictures in a book when asked to "touch doggie" and then showed where doggie is
throwing toys (she has moved out of the mouthing stage mostly, and is now very interested in throwing anything that is given to her... just another stage for our OT to be patient with. ha!)
learning to use a spoon with her yogurt (this is something our OT is working on with her because it involves fine motor skills)
using a straw cup (our old speech therapist helped us a ton with this, and we still see her every once in awhile when I have questions about feeding)

Karis wore her eye patch everyday for 3 months, but the doctor told us at the end of Sept that she can stop wearing it because her weak eye is stronger now and is working as it should be with only her glasses. :)

therapy tape to engage and support her ab muscles

Current Therapy- We took the month of August off from therapy in part for a break to our schedule, and in part because Karis had begun forming the bad habit of wailing whenever she was forced to work at therapy... and she would continue wailing until the work stopped. I was concerned that she might learn the lesson that crying = no more work, so we withdrew from therapy for one month and practiced the "no ma'am" command a lot at home while we were working with her. Thankfully she learned the command and has pretty much come out of that phase (though she does still cry when quadraped happens). When we started the new Fall schedule for therapy, we decided to drop down to one OT session every other week and one PT session every other week (they alternate weeks, so we go to therapy once per week now). And we found an amazing speech therapist (to work on speaking, because our other speech therapist mainly handles feeding) who comes to our home once every other week now also. She has honestly been such a blessing and has seen such good progress from Karis.

Extra pictures-