Liv's 18 Month Update

Holy moly, I am obsessed with our little Liv bear! ( I just used the thesaurus to try to find a word more fitting than obsessed, but no word captures the infatuation I have with this little girl. )  Everything thing she does is so freakin cute; I could just watch her for days. Eat, sleep, play, throw a fit, it doesn't matter; I find it all adorable. She is learning so much, every single day she says a new word or does something new that blows my mind. She is actually becoming a little human, and it is such a beautiful process to watch. 
But anyway I will get on with it already, today's post is Liv's 18-month update. And as much as I just went on and on about how great she is, it's not all great all the time. It is mostly good, but there is some bad...and even ugly. 

Sleeping-
So I am just going address the worst part right off the bat. We are experiencing a major, MAJOR 18-month sleep regression. We hit a sweet spot there for almost a month where Liv was going down so easy, sleeping all night, not waking up until 8 am. Life was good...well, that obviously didn't last.  We are now back to a major fight each time to get her down to sleep. She wakes up an average of two to three times a night, and she is waking up for the day around 6 am (on a good day). I have gotten soft a little and have been going to her in the night and even letting her come to bed us. I don't want this to become a habit but also I just really really want some sleep.  From my research, I have done this sleep regression should only last four weeks or so, so I am only a week or two away from things hopefully going back to normal. I fear I might have to sleep train again, so if that's the case, I will wait until December when dad is on a long road trip, so it doesn't interrupt his sleep. 

She is now out of the sleep sack and is using a pillow and blanket. She is not great at keeping the blanket on her during the night, so we just make sure to dress her in warm pj's and have the heat a little higher in her room. 

Eating-
Okay, this is where things get better. Liv is an amazing eater. I like to think it is because all the work I put in over the last year making sure she ate the right foods and stayed away from a lot of processed foods....but in reality, I think we just got lucky here. She pretty much eats what we put in front of her. She loves rice so I can mix anything with it and she will eat it. An easy go-to meal for her is just rice with chicken and broccoli mixed with it. 
We are still avoiding sugar, though, I have loosened up on her eating quite a bit. I am not giving her candy or anything, but I will let her have goldfish when we are at a friends house or even honey nut cheerios. And I now let her indulge with us on Sundays fun days, so that's usually pizza or a cheeseburger or something not healthy what so ever. 
From age one to 15 months she would still have a bottle morning and night. I was never able to get her to drink milk from a sippy cup, so when we cut out the bottle at 16 months, she just stopped drinking milk. Taking the bottle away was not hard for us, as long as she didn't see it she didn't care. 

Daycare-
Or as I refer to it a lot, preschool. Liv goes twice a week right now but after the holidays and once winter hits we are going to move her to three days a week. She loves it, and I love the school, so it is perfect. They have it structured like a real school, and Liv comes home having learned new things all the time which is amazing. 

Entertainment -
So Liv is not that into her toys. She more likes to do whatever I am doing. The one thing she does love though is taking care of her babies. She is obsessed with babies. It is so sweet; she will wrap her babies up in blankets and put them to sleep. Walking around the house bouncing them and swatting their bottoms. I find it crazy how she is already playing mama at such a young age. Other than that she loves to read, we read probably for almost an hour every evening before bed. 
She has just recently been getting into cartoons, which is amazing! The other morning I was able to put her in front of the tv and get fully ready...that hasn't happened, like ever. I am now trying to find good educational cartoons, so if you know of any good ones, please let me know! In the meantime I make her watch them in French, haha. If she is going to watch cartoons, may as well learn a second language. 

Personality - 
Liv is such a silly girl. She is very quiet and calm...most of the time.  But when we get in front of a lot of people or crowd (at hockey games for example) she turns in to this little socialite, crazy, party girl. Last hockey game after we won she was fist pumping everyone, blowing kisses, taking selfies with people in the stands, just working the crowd like it was no big deal. We are going to have our hands full when this girl is a teenager that's for sure. 

Milestones- 
She is speaking pretty good now, only when she wants to though, haha. I can rarely ask her to say something and then actually have her say it. We are currently working on animals and sounds, as well as body parts (eye, nose, etc) We plan on starting with colors soon. 
She is still eating in a highchair, but I just started shopping for a mini table and chairs. She prefers to sit at the dinner table, but that is usually more of a mess then what its worth. So we will transition her out of the high chair in the next month or so and hopefully she takes well to eating at her own table. 
When she was sleeping well we did talk about transitioning her into a bed...but then with this sleep regression, we decided to wait. At school, she doesn't nap in a crib, and it is going well, so I feel good about starting the transition at home once her sleeping is back on track. 
As for her schedule, again because of the sleep regression it changes daily. But when things are good, she wakes up around 7:30 am, naps from 1-2:30ish and then goes down to bed around 8ish. I have been bringing her to the hockey games on Saturday nights, so we always get off schedule a bit on the weekends. But she handles it well, so I don't stress about it. 

Okay, this was a doozy of a post, sorry! Hopefully I touched on everything. If I missed something just comment below. 

Much Love,