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[rivka]

Alex turned 16 months old this week. This is really a golden time.

She's so charming, happy, funny, cuddly, independent, smart. The incredible restlessness of a couple of months ago - the constant need for entertainment and changing scenery - has settled down. Now she sits on the floor and colors with crayons for long periods of time. She talks to her doggy and her little toy Sesame Street figures. She opens junk mail. She puts her puzzles together and talks about the pieces. She climbs up on the furniture and back down again. She has phone conversations, sometimes on her toy cell phone but more often (and with greater enthusiasm) on ours: "Hi! H'lo! Hi! Phone! [babble babble] Bye!"

She's funny. Saturday at dinner, she wrapped a thin strip of mango around her wrist, grinned at us, and announced, "A watch!" Then she held it up to various incorrect body parts ("Nose!" "Ear!"), laughing and shaking her head to show that she didn't mean it, before popping it in her mouth.

She's more affectionate. When she brings me a book to read, she'll suggest, "Lap." She loves to sit on my lap to color (although that has technical complications), look at books, or watch Blue's Clues. She'll lean in to us and say, "Hug hug," or just throw herself into our arms for a quick cuddle. Toys like doggy are still the most likely to be kissed (closed lips, chin thrust forward, and an emphatic "mmmmmmMMM!"), but sometimes we get kisses as well.

She still just loves to go for walks and play outside. She collects leaves, sticks, and small rocks. She splashes in puddles. She looks up at streetlamps and says, "Tall!" She points at passing cars and announces their color. She wants to investigate every barking dog she hears. And she definitely remembers where dogs have been seen in the past - she knows approximately where to find the bookstore with the amiable collie mix, and the gates that sometimes have dogs behind them.

I've lost count of her vocabulary, but it's well over two hundred words. Her early words were almost all concrete nouns, but now she uses plenty of verbs (hop, jump, walk, drink, sleep, scratch, fly) and adjectives (high, low, tall, hot, cold, loud). She makes adorable errors: she calls umbrellas "rain" and brooms "sweep." She knows just about all the parts of the body and most of the colors (red, green, blue, yellow, purple, pink, black, brown), and she loves to point them out. Two-word phrases are increasingly common: "red truck," "cracker, please," "more milk." She loves to answer questions with "no," regardless of her actual opinion, so we have a lot of conversations like this:

Alex: "Kitty, kitty, kitty!"
Me: "Oh, is there a kitty there?"
Alex: "No."

We had her 15-month well-baby check today, a month late. It was awful - she started crying as soon as we were put in an exam room, and turned purple with hysteria during the exam itself. Her pediatrician and his assistant both agreed that it was just the age, and that pretty much every toddler hates doctors with a passion. Fortunately, this time the exam didn't bring up anything that required further investigation.

Except, possibly, her weight. She didn't gain any weight from 12 to 16 months - she's stayed steady at 21 pounds, which puts her in the 13th percentile for girls her age. Her height, on the other hand, continues to hover right around the 95th percentile. Her doctor wasn't especially alarmed - he pointed out that if she wasn't getting adequate nutrition, she wouldn't be getting taller. But he wants us to make sure to schedule her 18 month visit right at 18 months, so we can continue to monitor her weight. In the meantime, I'm going to try offering more healthy snacks - she's generally been a three meals a day toddler, rather than a grazer, but I think she could probably eat a little more in between meals. (Any suggestions for healthy, high-calorie snacks?)

In general, this is just an amazing time. She went through a hard-to-parent phase a little while back, and I'm sure she'll hit another one soon... but in the meantime, I can hardly contain my overflowing heartful of toddler love.

Comments

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Another thought - do you feed her juice? I've read that the more juice they drink, the less likely they are to take in calories in food. You generally feed her what you're eating? I'm guessing that you eat fairly healthy, maybe she just needs foods at regular mealtimes that are just more calorically dense?

We're trying to move towards feeding her what we're eating, especially now that Michael isn't working late and therefore family dinners are possible. For the most part, she eats more healthily than we do.

Sample menu:

Breakfast - 1/2 cup oatmeal made with whole milk, 4 strawberries, 2 tablespoons Cheerios, 4oz whole milk.

Snack - 2 tablespoons mini graham crackers.

Lunch - 1 slice deli ham, 1 stick of string cheese, 1/2 slice whole wheat bread, 4 cooked baby carrots, 10 grapes, 4oz whole milk.

Snack - Earth's Best wholegrain carrot-raisin bar.

Dinner - 2/3 cup pasta topped with about 2 tablespoons tomato sauce, 1.5 tablespoons Italian turkey sausage, and 1 tablespoon peas; 1/2 banana, 4oz whole milk.

So: lots of dairy, lots of fruit, preponderance of whole grains, small quantities of meat and vegetables. No juice. She does eat eggs well, and her ped gave us the green light to give them to her as often as she wants, so we'll probably start offering scrambled eggs or egg salad more often. (I've been cringing about the mayonnaise in egg salad, but now it sounds like just the thing, doesn't it?)

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

Looks like a lot of food to me. The only big difference between that and Henry's diet is that he leans more towards meats and protien sources (beans, eggs), and not so much the grains. Hmm, maybe you could replace that whole milk with half and half. :-D

I'm betting more and more that those charts lean towards kids who eat chicken nuggets and french fries... She may be thin now, but she probably has a much more healthy future than your average 50th percentile kid.

($5 says that in about three months I have similar worries.)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I'm betting more and more that those charts lean towards kids who eat chicken nuggets and french fries...

If her absolute weight was low on the charts, but followed a normal upward curve, I would just figure her for a skinny kid. What concerns me is that she's dropped in percentile, from well above average (but in keeping with her height) to well below.

($5 says that in about three months I have similar worries.)

Hopefully, by then, I'll be able to tell you how we turned it around!

I made some banana-raisin-bran muffins last night and brought them out for morning snack. They disappeared in a heartbeat. (Alex and two of her friends split two muffins.) She also had some peach slices, raisins, and banana slices that another playgroup mom handed out. (All of the kids eat like they're starving at playgroup, no matter how they eat at home.) I think I'll also try pumpkin bread and zucchini bread for variety.

I don't think I'll give her half-and-half to drink, but I might use it in cooking. ;-) My sister also recommended putting butter on her bread or crackers, and melting cheese on her veggies. That's an easy change to make. But I think that adding denser snacks, and offering snacks even if she doesn't ask for them, will probably take care of things.

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about the butter or cheese idea. Likewise, melt some mozz on her spaghetti, or replace the turkey sausage with hamburger or pork sausage. It looks like her diet is pretty low fat, with the exception of the whole milk.

I was talking to my sister today, mom to the Amazing Growing Baby (tm). Eleanor was over 20 lbs by 3 months old. She's 19 months old now, and weighs 26 lbs. I think she went for a 6 month period where she didn't gain a thing. Her weight percentile has dropped significantly - she's still near average, but she was at 99th for so long. Karoline, my sister, said that she got a peek at her own baby book, and Eleanor's growth oddities mirrored her own closely. Maybe you could get your or Michael's baby book, and find that Alex is matching what you did?

You know, I do find growth patterns, food, and baby nutrition fascinating. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

Could you try estimating the calories she eats in a typical day such as you listed, and then compare it to the RDA of calories for her age group? (If such a number is available.) Maybe she's eating healthy, filling things, but because they are reasonably low-fat and low-calorie, it isn't adding up right for weight gain. Good luck! A.C.