Liv's 14 Month Update

Hey, guys! So our little Liv is 14 months old today. I feel like baby updates are getting harder and harder. After all the major milestones are hit it is just small stuff to talk about, and I am thinking that might be too boring for a blog post. So instead of every other month like I have been doing, I will do baby updates maybe just every six months or so from now on. 

Liv's little personality is full force now. She is so silly and has the funniest facial expressions. People are constantly commenting that they have never seen a baby with so much personality. Her current favorite seems to be the duck face; it is so stinking cute! 
We are loving summer, spending most of our days outside. She loves to be able to run around naked, and we have been swimming a few times now which she seems to enjoy. I plan on putting her in swim lessons this winter. We have also been doing a lot of hiking. Carey carries her on his back using the Osprey pack. We really like it, and it is surprisingly comfortable with a lot of support. We would totally recommend it. 

Milestones:
Liv is getting more and more chatty every day,  so far she only clearly says mama, dada, ball, dog, hi and bye. 
She is still not walking on her own. She totally could, but she seems to err on the side of caution with everything. So, for now, she walks holding someone's hand. Ohh and I wanted to touch on crawling. Liv skipped this and used a scootching maneuver. After spending some time at my parent's house, who has carpet, we did discover that she can crawl no problem but prefers the butt scootch on hard surfaces. 

It is funny, with all these milestones it was the change in the way she started playing with her toys that made me feel like she was turning into a big girl. Instead of putting toys in her mouth or throwing them around the room she started playing with them correctly. I don't know why, but it took me back when I saw her playing with the barn animals in the actual barn. Made me realize that she is not a baby anymore. 

Food:
Liv has been a good eater since day one, and that hasn't changed too much. She pretty much eats whatever we are eating (as long as is healthy). I always have chicken breast mixed with rice, beans, and broccoli cooked and ready to go in the fridge for a quick lunch, or for when I don't want to feed her what we are eating. My friends and family give me crap quite a bit because I avoid giving Liv sugar and other unhealthy but typical kid food. But for now she doesn't know any different, so why even bother? We were laughing the other day because we were all having ice cream, and instead of ice cream, Liv got a carrot to snack on, but she was as happy as could be with her carrot! 
My goal was to get Liv off the bottle right away once she started drinking cow's milk. She was fighting it pretty hard and refused to drink milk from a sippy cup. I wanted to cold turkey it, but this was the first real disagreement the hubby, and I had in regards to parenting. Carey felt like she should still be able to have the bottle. So we decided we would give it until 18 months and then take away the bottles. 

Sleep:
Her sleep has been pretty consistent, so nothing new to report here. She goes down every night around 8:30 pm and wakes up around 7:30 am. Occasionally she will wake up around 5 am, but we never get her up before 7 am so she has learned to just play in her crib until we get her. 
Oh, we did give her a pillow about a week ago, so I guess that is new! Whenever she was on our bed, she would always go and lay on our pillows, so we felt like she was ready for one in her crib. I just picked up a little travel sized pillow from Walmart. 

Travel:
e have been doing a TON of road trips this summer. Most being 6+ hours. Liv is  We leave first thing in the morning, that seems to be when she is at her sleepiest so we can get her to take a couple of naps. We try to take our time with the drives, stopping half way for lunch and some play time. She is bound to get grumpy though so I keep her little backpack full of some of her favorite toys, along with our little Yeti cooler full of snacks, and even a bottle for when she looses it. We started letting her watch cartoons about a month ago. (I try not to make it a regular thing, but her dad likes to let her watch them because of that the only time she will sit and cuddle with him, haha.)  But I will have the iPad ready to go with veggie tails for the long car rides. 
I haven't flown with her for awhile, but we will be flying quite a bit the next few days, so I am hoping it goes well! I plan on packing lots of snacks! 

Much Love,