DeLange News: Leah 18 Months Old

Weight: 24lb(70th percentile)

Height: 33in (81st percentile)

Our little Leah is 18 months old! I can’t believe how grown up she has gotten in the last few months, granted adding in a sibling has made her grow up pretty fast :) Oh Leah, where do I even START to describe you?! She is at such a fun and busy age right now, it is hard to keep up with her.

Sleep: She is a good sleeper for the most part. Takes one nap during the day, usually around 11:30/12 and sleeps for a couple hours. Then goes to bed around 7:30pm and is up for the morning around 7am-ish. Although really every day is a little different, some days she gets up way early, then naps early, or naps twice, or goes to bed late, or will sleep in……you never really know what you are going to get.

Eating: Oh thank goodness I have one good eater…..sorry Brie, it isn’t you. Leah will eat just about anything. I have noticed she isn’t much of a breakfast person though, she will drink her milk and maybe some fruit or bites of my breakfast, but isn’t interested in sitting in her chair and eating something. She also isn’t really into carbs that much (crazy kid!!!) she would much rather have fruit, cheese, or meat before having carbs. Which is hard for quick meals and snacks, I would love to just give her some crackers in a cup and send her on her way. But she just ends up feeding them to Josie. I usually have to put Josie outside or behind the gate when Leah is eating in her highchair, their relationship with food is ridiculous! Leah loves feeding the dog, and the dog constantly begs from her. So you are never really sure how much of her meal she ate and how much of it Josie ate. I always say the best diet is sitting next to Leah, she will eat all your food! Sometimes she is a bottomless pit! We just recently stopped doing bottles in the morning and before bed time though, she just does cold milk in a sippy cup. I have to push it on her though because she drinks way less milk now than when we did bottles.

Pacifier: She is OBSESSED with her pacifier still (plug, as we call it) and has a lovey (nigh-night) that she absolutely loves. We have a little table with a drawer in the middle of our house, and that is where we keep all her plugs. She will go to that drawer and grab one whenever she wants, and sometimes will swap out one that is in her mouth for a new one. If you tell her to put her plugs away she will go put them away in the drawer. Not something I am going to push getting rid of until closer to 2, and even then I think we will just make the rule it stays in the bed. We’ll see. Right now I kind of let her have free reign with them, but I’ll pop it out of her mouth and say “you don’t need that!” and put it away and she won’t care.

Talking: Just recently she is becoming more of a talker, she was a little late to game (well compared to Brie anyways). She isn’t really to the point where she will try and say stuff you ask her to say, but she says new things all the time. Still doing lots of “eh!” and pointing. She does put a couple words together here and there, she will say “Hi baby”. Some of her common words are:

Baby “ba-beeeeee”
More “Moe”
Dada
Mama
Water “Wawa”
Wow “Woooooow”
Num-num-num
Dog “Hepff” —> don’t ask….she used to say the sound a dog makes to say dog, but it was more like “haboof” and some how that turned to this, weird
Nigh-night (her lovey)
Plug “Plah”
Hi
Bye

Activity: She is my active one! Has ZERO interest in TV, won’t even sit for a minute. She is a climber! Climbs on the kitchen table, on the TV stand, out of her highchair…. Leah has also master climbing up our huge play-set out back, but is too nervous to go down the slide alone so she gets stuck up there! She loves being outside, I let the girls go outside and play without me out there. If I leave the door open to the front and back I can hear them, and I instruct Brie to stay with Leah. They are really learning to play nice together, which is so precious for me to see! Leah does love to poke the bear though with Brie often times, she will do things she KNOWS will make Brie mad. She does the same with me too, tries to get a rise out of me by doing something naughty and looking right at me! Little stinker!

Play: Right now Leah’s favorite thing to play with is baby dolls. She loves to hold them, wrap them up, and push the baby stroller. It is so cute when she holds the baby and bounces up and down saying “shhhhh”. She likes to look at books independently, but really has no interest in sitting and having one read to her. She likes to talk on the pretend phones we have. Coloring is another favorite, when I let her….which isn’t very often :) She also loves Josie, we have to remind her to pet her nice. If she wants to get a rise out of us she will pull Josie’s fur, poor dog!

I could go on and on describing my precious middle child, but I think that about covers the main highlights. She is such a busy body! We love our Lele SO much. Alec always says “She is SO cute I could just eat her!”

She isn't a huge smiler, so catching them on camera is rare!