Almost 15 Months

It's been awhile since I recorded what's going on with Baby A. She is almost 15 months old!

First: teething. I feel like Amelia has been teething constantly since about 13 months. There has been a lot of whining, fussing, and night-waking that I feel is teething related--it is crazy to me that some doctors think that teething does not disrupt babies' sleep. Plus she has had a runny nose with no other cold symptoms for a long time. It is hard to know for sure what is going on, though, because Amelia is very secretive about her mouth. She does not feel that anyone should look in there, ever. However, using tricks, games, flashlights, and all of my zookeeper skills (imagine trying to pry open the mouth of an unwilling alligator), I have confirmed that she is getting new teeth. The 6th and 7th teeth, the two on either side of the bottom front, broke through at about 14 months, and the top right molar broke through soon after. I felt the bottom left molar last night, although I am not sure how long it has been there. And I think she is getting more on both the top and bottom. Really I think this is just one long teething session in which she is getting all of her teeth. I will be glad when they are all in.

On the mobility front, Amelia has left crawling completely behind. She can easily squat and stand back up, and she can walk quickly, a cute little trot. She even started jumping a little bit--mostly just gleeful knee bends, but yesterday she actually cleared the ground. She has been practicing climbing the stairs like a grown-up--as in not on all fours. I have to hold both of her hands and say, "Take a big step!" Then she steps up and says, proudly, "Ooohhh!"

She is saying a few more words: "bear," as in teddy bear, and she will answer the questions of what a dog, a monkey, and cow says with noises similar to those animals. We think she knows "moon," too, and she continues to practice "baby" and "no."

Speaking of "no," she is definitely establishing herself as her own person. She gave me her first mean, defiant look on the plane back from NC. She had been tearing up the Sky Mall, one of her favorite plane activities, and she started putting little wads of the pages in her mouth. At first she was spitting them out, and we were kind of going with it, because it was a long day. (We calculated that we traveled for 14 hours: the NC coast, to RDU, to Philadelphia, to Denver, to the Southwest Baggage office when we couldn't find our bags, to the DEN economy lot, and, finally, home. Our bags made it the next day, one in the afternoon, one in the middle of the night). Anyway, then Amelia stopped spitting out the paper and just held a big wad in her mouth. She wouldn't open her mouth (see above) and kept squirming and shaking her head, so finally I just stuck my finger in there and dug out the paper. She shrieked and broke away from my grasp, grabbed the Sky Mall, ripped out a piece of paper and bit it. As she did all this, she was giving me the kind of angry, rebellious look I would expect from a teenager. It definitely said, I will put this paper in my mouth if I want to.

And it was so, so funny.

I could not stop laughing, and I knew I shouldn't be laughing. But it was so funny! I just haven't seen that kind of autonomy and will from her before. My sweet baby. I know that in the future, I should not laugh at that kind of thing, but I swear, I still laugh just thinking about it. It still amazes me, this little being we created, just keeps growing and growing into her own self.

And, as usual, that little self has woken up from her nap before I wrote all I wanted to write... to be continued.