Sonia’s 16th month was one of exploration and expanding skills.
At the beginning of the month, Sonia started her first noticeable pretend play with feeding milk and snacks to her Baby, Monkey or Lovey.
Soon after, she started to show a lot more interest in “reading” books and being read to. This seemed to accelerate when we got her her own little chair. She now asks for “book” a lot (although it still sounds pretty similar to “food”, “spoon” and “pool”), and we have started a routine of going through a number of books first thing in the morning while she drinks her milk.
While she can sit for 20-30 minutes going through books on our lap or by herself in her chair, her attention span isn’t long enough to get through most of them individually. More often, she is in and out of the chair with different books, spending time practicing turning pages. She has some favorites that she calls out by name like “Gecko” for The Goodnight Gecko and “Tiger” for Tiger is a Scaredy Cat and others that she just goes to over and over again, like Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Toward the end of the month, she has started to be quite picky about which book she reads, and has learned to say “no” to ones she doesn’t want to read and “otro” when she wants you to read a different one. She is also getting good at pointing out things she knows the word for when she sees them in pictures, and mimicking actions we do when we read certain pages.
Other play developments included a revived interest in playing “Boo,” and in coloring with crayons and her window markers for the first time. She can even say “color” now. She also is able to understand full sentence suggestions like “go over there and smell the flower,” and continues to mimic both sounds and actions with surprising skill.
Sonia’s motor skills continue to develop as well. She is getting a lot more confident at My Gym, and even starting to run a bit during our walks. Merging her motor and play developments, she started playing a game of picking up sticks and poking all the trees on our walk with it. She can say “stick,” “poke,” and “tree.”
The one development we aren’t that excited about is the increasing prevalence of “no” in her vocabulary, and the mini meltdowns that she has started when we take her away from something she is enjoying or don’t understand what she wants. So far it has been manageable, only a few seconds of tears each time and still distractable. However, we’re already realizing we need to be firm on certain boundaries, but let an awful lot go, and that we need to communicate a lot between ourselves so that we don’t approach the same situation differently. I have a feeling this is going to get way harder before it gets easier.
In general, it has been a relatively happy and healthy month for Sonia. She has given signs of being ready to transition down to one nap, especially when she’s out and about with Mommy and Daddy during the weekend. Last weekend, we drove 2 hrs South to get Eric a new car and Sonia slept only 35 mins in the car, but was calm and happy entertaining herself for the rest of the drive and then didn’t take a second nap until we headed home 7hrs later! Such a trooper!
In the last week of the month, though, Sonia’s healthy, happy attitude was put to the test when she had a couple traumatic events in a row. On Tues night she accidentally knocked the carbon monoxide detector slightly out of it’s socket – man those things are loud! On Wed afternoon she handled a cactus during our nightly walk and ended up with a ton of teeny tiny prickers all over her hands. It took Eric and I an hour with tweezers, tape, etc to get enough of them out for her to stop bawling! Then from Friday to Monday I took Sonia alone to visit my mom & sister in Charlotte. She had an awesome time playing in the lake, the pool and with the dogs, but was very clingy to Mommy.
There’s one more wonder weeks leap due to start this coming month, and I wonder if it’s starting already. She is becoming such a little person!