15 Months

Just like each month prior, this has been my favorite month. Well, mostly, except for the sleeping aspect... but the good far outweighs the bad. I will start with the sleep just to get that out of the way and then move on to happier moments! Taylor has been transitioning from two naps to one. This is not an easy task. She was in such a great routine and one day, like the snap of our fingers, this all went out the window. She refused to sleep in her crib, the nap and bedtime routine took at least 45 minutes and many times ended with a car ride to force the sleep, and she was waking up at 4:30 AM! Ahh, a rough couple of weeks. I think the hardest part of all of this is just not knowing what to do but I think the only answer is just riding out the storm! Things have gotten much better over the last several days. We still have the early mornings but she has been getting in bed with us and sleeping for another few hours. She never really did this before so I have to say, for now, I kind of like it!

Taylor has become quite the little helper. She wants to wipe our noses for us, hold the phone to our ears, sweep the floor, clean the table, pick tiny specks of dirt off the floor and hand them to us, and she loves to feed us her food. Her poor cousin Nolan really sees the brunt of this as she forces cheerios or apple juice in to his mouth whenever they are together. She has also started being able to communicate her wants and needs in way other then grunting or whining - although she still does this too. She grabs our hands to drag us around the house pointing to what she wants. She has also started grabbing our feet and trying to put shoes on them when she wants to go outside.

On to the pacifier war... She still uses it and still LOVES it. We never gave it to her outside the house, other then in the car, but now we are trying to limit it to bed and nap times only. We have started telling her to leave it in her crib before she goes downstairs in the morning and after naps. She has really started to understand this and will walk in to her room and put it in her crib on her own. Every once in awhile during the day she she will sneak in to her room and grab it and suck away at it. It is like a little treat and when she comes running to me with it in her mouth she laughs because she knows she is not supposed to be doing it. It makes me giggle every time. During the course of our sleep struggles I would tell her that if she didn't want to take a nap she couldn't have her pacifier and most times she immediately took it from her mouth and chucked it across the room... such a smarty pants.

Taylor melts our hearts everyday. Whether she is giving us kisses or giving us hugs she is a real love bug. My new favorite thing is when I am rocking her to sleep and she reaches up, takes the pacifier out of her mouth, looks at me and says, "ma ma". Taylor says Ma Ma about a thousand times a day now, but it is something about they way she says it as she is falling asleep that is just so sweet. It is almost like what she really is saying is "goodnight mama, I love you."

We have been keeping ourselves very busy these last few weeks. I have loved having the extra two days off this summer to spend with Taylor. I joined a Mommies Group which has been a fun experience. Taylor has made some new buddies and I have gotten to meet some other Moms. It has been nice going on walks and trying out new kid friendly things to do in the area.

I can't believe how fast this whole experience is going. We are still amazed by her all the time. We sneak in to her room every night to watch her sleep and on a daily basis we talk about just how lucky we are to have her in our lives.