General Update: February

Age (in months, or years and months): 16 months

Physical abilities: still climbing up everything like a monkey, tries to jump on the bed, but not getting both feet off the ground yet, I can't believe she hasn't tried to climb out of her crib yet. Rides all of her toys (shopping cart, car, etc.) like a horse now, complete with rocking motion.

Speech/language: vocabulary, sentence length, etc: No changes, she has learned a few new words in the last week. I'm trying hard to catch one of her important phone conversations on video, but she always stops when she sees me. Last night she helped us yell at the t.v. about a play on the Superbowl. It was pretty funny.

Reading/pre-reading: still one of her favorite things to do. She reads in the car all the time and brings us book after book to read to her.

Number stuff: nothing new to report.

Other cognitive stuff: puzzles, reasoning, etc: We started doing harder puzzles with her. I have some old wooden Playskool ones that are not jigsaw...maybe 10-12 pieces. We also have a couple jigsaw ones. So far we've been doing them together and talking about how the pieces fit together and how the picture looks. She can usually figure out the last couple of ones on her own. She knows the word "rotate" and that helps her understand when she needs to turn a piece around. Last night she did a new peg puzzle at a friend's house super fast, and my friend went on and on about how smart she was.

Creativity: Loves her art time, and is really into stickers right now. Since she climbs everything, we try to think about what to put up so she can't utilize objects to climb even higher. She has resorted to moving things from other rooms to get where she wants to go. The other day she had moved her shopping cart into the kitchen and was standing on the push bar against the counter to get into the sink. She also stacks pillows and cushions, and even uses the dog to get into more trouble.

Imagination: We're seeing more pretend play with her little people. She holds long conversation on the phone, and tries to get the dog to talk on it too.

Social: Has spent a little more time around kids lately. She's going through a hitting phase, and even hits other kids in the books she reads. We are working on this a lot. At the museum she hit another little girl, and the second I started to say something, she looked at me and then gave her a hug. I'm hoping this goes away fast!

Character/personality: very loving and sweet to us, compasionate to the dog especially

Anything else/other: wondering if I should start potty training. She knows the hand sign for potty, and what it means. I'm seeing most of the signs, and she will go get her own diaper if I ask if she needs one. I'm kinda waiting to see if she start doing it independently though.