Nicolette's 14th Month

Nicolette's little personality is showing more and more these days! She is such a thoughtful and determined little girl.

One of my favorite things that Nicolette does now is "ballerina turns". I started showing her a simple bourree turn and she immediately started copying me. She doesn't raise her arms up yet but she's got the turning down pat. One night she was reading her ballerina princess book and she suddenly got excited and stood up and started ballerina turning just like the princesses in her book.  It made me giggle!

Nicolette LOVES books.  She has definitely taken to "reading". I was worried because during her first year I would try to read to her but she would wiggle and squirm and try to get away or just shut the books entirely. I of course jumped to the conclusion that she would be one of the children who hated reading, would barely be able to finish school and end up living in our basement for the rest of her life. Well, crisis averted...for the moment it seems that we have a reader on our hands. Books are her favorite toy these days. She even likes to build a nest using the Boppy pillow and go through the books in her bedroom one, by one, by one.

She has the Sandra Boynton book Barnyard Dance and the first lines are "Stomp your feet! Clap your hands! Everybody's ready for a barnyard dance." She now stomps her feet and it is so cute.

When we're reading books I'll use my finger to point to different pictures and we'll talk about what they are. A few weeks ago she started grabbing my index finger and she'll hold it and make me point to different things in the book. 

Her vocabulary is growing. She says "Mama", "Dada", "Up", "Done", "Wah-wah" (water), and when we ask What does a cow say she'll say, "Mmmmmmmmoo" or What does a sheep say? And she'll say "BAH!"

She's in a Mommy & Me ballet class and she's the youngest one by far. It's so neat to watch her intently observing the 2-2/12 year olds in her class. They can run and jump and she's desperately trying to figure out how to do it to. We got home from dance a couple of weeks ago and when I would say "jump" she would bend her knees and straighten them really fast and then giggle and giggle thinking that she was really jumping.

We've transitioned 1 Nap. She was probably ready earlier but I was afraid that if we switched she wouldn't get enough sleep. It took a couple of weeks to make the transition but now she's waking between 6:30/7, going down to nap around 12:30 or 1 and sleeping for about 2 hours. Bedtime is still 7-7:30. If she naps longer it takes her longer to fall asleep at night but we're trying to keep bedtime consistent. The transition has put a damper on Nicolette's social life but now that more of her friends are switching too we hope to be back at playdates soon!

But my favorite thing is our nighttime routine and Nicolette's new practice of Stealing kisses - if you missed it you can read more about that here.

She's a special little child and I'm having the best time watching her grow up. It's definitely going faster than I would like so I'm trying to take time to savor every moment.