Neola is 14 months old as of July 12. These past couple of months with Neola have been so fun! She’s not walking yet, but getting oh so close!
In Neola’s 11-12 month post, I didn’t mention anything about what we did for her first birthday. Her actual birthday on May 12 was pretty lowkey — we had doughnuts for breakfast (that we had just bought that morning from Cub), played in the rain, had McDonald’s for lunch, and went to soccer practice for the older kids at night. #fourthchild #firstbirthday
But we celebrated all four kids’ birthdays with our families on May 21. We did a (very, very loose) superhero theme. It ended up being a FREEZING day. We had the older kids’ soccer games that morning, and I ended up running home between games with Neola to get winter gear for everyone because we were all turning into icicles. For the party, we ate food and played with water balloons (for the kids, the fun of water balloons outweighed how cold it was).
Size
A week after her first birthday, we took Neola in to the doctor because she had had a ton of mucus, a bad cough, and was super fussy/clingy (unlike her), and it has been going on for almost three weeks. Turned out, she had a double ear infection. 😢 So we gave her amoxicillin for 10 days and she was better…
For about a week. Then she got the same thing again: congestion, cough, fussy. After two weeks, I brought her back in. Another ear infection. 😢 Now she was put on a stronger antibiotic, Augmentin. She hated the taste of that medicine, and it gave her a bad diaper rash.
During that same time, she got two new teeth on bottom, and two molars on top. And then she got Covid on top of all that! Needless to say, there have been some rough nights of sleep!
Long story short, I just took her in for her well-child visit on the day she turned 14 months, and she is now 22 lbs 9 oz (76%), 2 feet 7 inches tall (81%). At her (sick) doctor appointment on May 19 (only a week after her first birthday), she was 21 lbs 10 oz and 2 feet 6 inches tall.
Sleeping
Neola’s sleep is still not ideal. But since I’ve been sleeping on the floor with her (I’m on a twin mattress, she’s on a crib mattress), the wake-ups are generally not terrible (unless there are a LOT of them, then it’s painful). On an average night, she probably wakes up 2-4 times, nurses, and goes right back to sleep. On a rough night, she wakes up 6-8 times, and sometimes cries when I try to roll her back onto her mattress.
She mostly sleeps on her side, though recently she has started sleeping on her belly a little. She rarely sleeps on her back anymore. I am encouraged that there have been a few times when she has fallen asleep on her own (with me laying right there) after flopping around a bit (as opposed to nursing to sleep). She has also fallen asleep in her crib a few times after crying for 5-10 minutes (I reserve that for the times when she won’t settle down and go to sleep, even though it’s bedtime). That’s progress!
She is still consistent in her napping preferences: she falls asleep either nursing, in the stroller or in her carseat. I actually wish she didn’t fall asleep in the car so easily because she will take a 20-minute cat nap at 5 or 6 PM sometimes when we’re on our way home, and then she’s wired until 10 PM. We also discovered that she likes mowing the lawn with Travis.
Her typical schedule is wake up around 6:30 AM, first nap 9:30-10:30, second nap 1:30-3:00, bed around 7:30.
I’ve been tempted to feel guilty about Neola’s sleeping habits, and while they are often challenging (because holding a baby for naps when you have three other kids is hard), I come back again and again to the conclusion that these are just the circumstances God has for us right now, and we don’t need to “solve the problem.” Thinking that we can (and should) “fix” this leads to us trusting ourselves, instead of trusting God.
I’ve also reminded myself that all of our other kids had their own unique sleep challenges at this age, but are sleeping champs now, so we must’ve done something right! And I also found a community of people on social media who are supporting kids’ sleep habits without sleep training. Those are the messages I needed to hear: It’s ok to not sleep train! It’s ok to share a bed on the floor with your toddler! It’s just a season!
Eating
Neola is an eating champ! She eats almost anything. She loves pretty much any kind of meat (lunch meat, chicken, brat, pulled pork, pork tenderloin, taco meat, salami, meat stick, summer sausage). She also LOVES cheese (we mainly feed her cheddar and mozzarella). She also loves berries, grapes, watermelon, teething wafers, Graham crackers, Goldfish, and raisins.
I always feed her breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then usually a couple of snacks too. Sometimes she eats a snack while I’m making food, and then she eats more while we’re eating. I’m actually kind of amazed that she’s not chubbier based on how much food she eats. 🤷♀️
She’s still nursing, mostly in the middle of the night, but also before both of her naps (if I’m planning to hold her, otherwise she will fall asleep in the stroller or carseat without it), and when she goes to bed. We’ve given her cow’s milk a few times, but she doesn’t seem to love it.
Like I mentioned earlier, Neola got two more teeth on the bottom middle (for a total of 4), plus two of her top molars, bringing her up to a total of 10 teeth. Now I think she’s starting to work on the bottom two molars. Teething affects her sleep a little, but it mainly makes her clingy and snotty during the day. This girl produces so. much. mucus!
Development
Neola is a mover and a shaker these days! She learned how to pull up on things and crawl up the stairs (but not down) around 13 months, and is getting into all sorts of things these days. She is pretty timid when it comes to learning how to walk though, and doesn’t even have much interest in pushing the alligator clacker around.
Her favorite activities these days are playing in the sandbox, playing in the water table, pulling tupperware out of the cupboard, crawling up the stairs, and nesting on the floor mattresses in her room. She enjoys swinging, but definitely gets to a point where she’s had enough sitting around and wants to get out. She also loves ripping apart tissues, napkins, wrapping paper, books, etc.; digging through mommy’s purse; and pulling books off bookshelves.
Neola is curious and likes checking out almost everything — except her baby toys! She plays with those the least. (After her hip dysplasia surgery, I might declutter most of her baby toys… we’ll see if she plays with them more when she’s not mobile.) Her favorite thing to play with is my earbud case (now with the earbuds taken out). She opens and shuts it, opens and shuts it.
Speaking of which, because Neola got Covid right before her surgery (and still tested positive two days before the surgery even though it had been over a week since her initial positive), her surgery got rescheduled to August 18. So we have a whole other month to do summer activities that involve water and sand. 🙂
Since her first birthday, Neola has gone kayaking on our river, boating on Gull Lake, camping at Itasca State Park, and on an weekend trip to Duluth.
She is almost always a trooper, and actually did no worse than normal with sleeping away from home, which is all I can ask for (haha!). The hardest thing about camping was that she just wanted to put the rocks at our campsite in her mouth all the time!
Of course, Neola still gets a lot of attention from her siblings. Corbin has started really playing with her too, which is super sweet overall, but he often gets a little rowdy and makes her cry.
Neola is the sweetest little girl, and we love her so much! I am really trying to soak up the baby stage with her, because it is going by so fast! She’s almost a toddler already! (single tear)
And that’s Neola at 14 months!
If Annabelle wakes up during the night (which she still does once on average, though some nights she sleeps straight through and some wacky nights she’s up 3-4 times), I nurse her. I also nurse her right away in the morning, and before her naps and bedtime. Otherwise, she’s just eating food and drinking water. She doesn’t drink cow’s milk really at all… I haven’t tried very hard to get her to, but she doesn’t seem to like it much. I’m not too worried about it at this point.
Sleeping
Annabelle waffles between one and two naps a day. I try to get the girls to take their afternoon naps together as much as possible (giving me a much-needed break) but some days, it just doesn’t work. I’d say it’s about 60-40 (nap together-nap separately). If I can see that the naps aren’t going to overlap, I have Emma watch her iPad in her room for 20-30 minutes while Annabelle is napping, so I at least get a teeny break.
Development
Unlike her sister, Annabelle does not like swinging very much. She seems to enjoy it for about 5 minutes and then wants out. (Emma could swing all the day long.) She hasn’t been a huge fan of grass or sand so far, but each day she gets a little more adventurous. Just today she was crawling around on our driveway and the grass in front of our house (which means filthy pants for mommy to wash!).
Annabelle does love water like Emma does, though. She loves being in the pool and tub, and the one time we went to the beach so far this year, Annabelle walked in up to her diaper (I was not preparing for swimming). My parents bought Emma a water table for her birthday and Annabelle has really enjoyed that too.
Annabelle has a handful of words now–dada (dad), dawdee (doggy), uh oh, ma (more), uh (up), ah daw (all done)–and we can tell that she’s comprehending more too. The other night, we were playing in the bathroom and I asked Annabelle if she wanted to take a bath. She looked toward the bathtub, said some gibberish, and crawled over to the tub. She’s also learned the sign for “more” and has used that a handful of times to request more food. She also loves blowing raspberries, just with her mouth and also on my arm. One night, I was trying to put her down for bed, and she just kept blowing on my arm for almost 10 minutes. I was laughing pretty hard.
Annabelle still puts up with a lot of rough play from Emma. It is the most frustrating part of parenting right now. Seriously, the choices a toddler makes defy logic. The other night, we were playing with the big lego blocks while watching a movie. Emma took a stack of blocks and dropped it right on Annabelle’s head. WTH?!?! We’ve started using the 1-2-3 Magic discipline approach, but when Emma purposefully or even sometimes negligently hurts Annabelle, she immediately gets a timeout. Is it working? Who knows. Emma has a really hard time keeping her hands to herself. Poor Annabelle gets pushed, pulled, dragged, hit, bit, shoved, hair pulled, toys stolen, head covered with blankets–you name it. I think Emma views Annabelle as her life-size doll to play with. Annabelle also gets a decent amount of head bonks and bruises from her own exploring as well. Thankfully she hasn’t gotten seriously injured yet.
Right before Annabelle turned 14 months, she went on her third airplane ride, this time to Cleveland, Ohio. She did really well! I nursed her on the flight from MSP to Cleveland, and she slept most of the way. More details coming in a separate post about our trip…
Life, Really Blog 