17 Months Old

This picture is of Mena's first pony tail. Her hair is getting long!

Mena actually turned 17 months old the day before Jake was born, but I'm blogging everything on one day so the entries got reversed. It's been an exciting month for Mena. She took her first steps on her own on January 19th. She's now consistently taking 2-3 steps without falling and has gone as many as 6-7 steps before she fell. She's very proud of herself and will choose to walk as long as there is a wall or furniture there for her to hold onto. The physical therapist from LPS will no longer be making weekly visits since Mena's gross motor skills are age appropriate now! Mena is making great improvements with the help of her language teacher who will continue making weekly visits.

Mena now weighs 25 pounds and is taller although we haven't tried to measure how tall she is. She's still wearing size 2 tops and size 12 month pants. She hasn't gotten any new teeth but with teeth comes biting of your tongue. On Feb 2nd Mena was bouncing on my lap and lost her balance. I caught her by the hips so she stayed on my lap, but her upper body fell to the side and she hit her mouth on her Little Tykes table. A cup of cold water and some rocking with Mommy calmed her down. It sucks to bite your tongue!

Mena had a cold this month but when she started coughing like a bark I called the doctor. Turns out it was croup. We put a vaporizer in her room and she started improving immediately. For months now we've only let Mena have her binkies when she was in bed but since she was sick I'd let her bring one out to the living room. I knew she was starting to feel better when she stood on the couch, held the binkie over the back, looked right at me, dropped it and said "uh oh!"

In addition to "hi" and "ya," Mena's also saying "yes," "here," "this," and "thank you." These new words aren't always understandable. I'm with her all day so I am beginning to recognize when she's saying these words since they do sound the same each time. Mena has also figured out that she can sign "more" to mean not just "more food." The sad thing was that the first time she signed "more" to not mean food was when she had croup and she was asking me to put more vaseline under her nose!

Mena is understanding a lot more of what we say to her. I've noticed that she's connecting words with actions (like pattycake and tell them bye) although she's not yet connecting words to objects. Mena's language teacher has a lot of great ideas that are helping Mena make the language connections she needs.

The teachers from LPS did a little bit of testing with Mena earlier in the month and her language was at the level of a 12 month old and her gross motor, fine motor, problem solving, and personal-social were past the 14 month mark. Obviously, she's progressed since then in gross motor so that her PT doesn't need to come any more. Mena is developing wonderfully and Gene and I couldn't be more thrilled.