17 Months Old!

Sweet Eloise Jane, today you are 17 months old!

You have gotten extra mischievous in the past month, running away from us when we try to dress you, throwing off your glasses over and over again, climbing up on chairs & tables, etc. You are realizing you have a WILL and can choose what you do/don't want to do. Most hilariously you will yell out "NO NO!" when you remove your glasses, so I always know when to come running to put them back on you! You are smart as a whip and pick up new words and skills daily. You have now figured out how to open doors, so we have deadbolts on the way!

 Here are your official 17 month updates!

How old? 17 months today!

How big? You are now in 18-24 or 2T tops/pants, size 6 diapers, and almost a size 6 shoe.

Teeth? All that remains to come in are your 4 incisors and 2 year molars- you are currently holding steady at 12 teeth.

Potty? Doing great there! I'd say we catch 80% of your #2's and about 60% of #1's. You have also told me you had to go a couple of times, which is the beginning of actually getting it. I've also noticed that if you have to go #2 you will start running back and forth randomly, and if I say "do you have to go potty?" and you run to the bathroom, it's a sure sign you have to go!

Words? SO MANY this month! You can pretty much repeat anything we say to you at this point. You love to say "ah-bye" (bye bye) to people, you request to "slide," you'll call out "more GO" when we stop pushing you in your play stroller, and are now singing along to a few songs (Twinkle Twinkle, Snowflake, You Are My Sunshine). You also love to exclaim "bub-bles!" when it is bath time.

Here you are singing to Twinkle Twinkle!

Sleep? We have officially entered the ONE NAP zone! It gradually happened over the past month where even IF we laid you down in the afternoon you would rarely fall asleep. So now you nap 11am- 12:30/1ish, and are completely ready for bed by 6:45/7pm. You'll sleep through until 7am the next morning.

 

 This is still your go-to 'cozy' pose, done when tired or wanting comfort. So sweet!

 

Christmas pajamas!

Food? You are still a great eater! You love to try to use forks and drink out of "big kid" glasses. You have whole milk in the morning, before your nap, and at bed time, and are completely weaned off of breast milk.

After eating you love to play with these little toy kitchen bottles- I found you stacking them the other morning!

 New skills? At 17 months you are getting more and more brave physically. You are wanting to try somersaults ALL THE TIME, which isn't so great when an adult isn't there to spot you. ; ) You LOVE going down slides (the bigger the better!), and climbing up and down stairs and hills.

You saw the first snow of your life this past month! On the evening of December 7th Austin got a few inches of snow, and luckily some remained the next morning for us to explore. You LOVED eating it!

Probably the only time in you'll ever wear this coat

You also met Santa this past month! You were NOT going to sit on his lap without me right there, and so it was I got into the photos with you. We had a fun afternoon at our beloved Driskill Hotel for the festivities, which was a fun way to kick off the Holiday season:

Your hair has been pretty unruly lately- even though it is super fine, it is incredibly tangled in the back and requires a lot of conditioner to comb through! You'll often have a couple of curls standing up on the top of your head and another curl making a mullet in the back. It's pretty hilarious.

Favorite things?

Swimming! You are ON FIRE in swim class, and shriek with the anticipation of each new activity or song. You now happily and willingly jump in to me to go under water, and just like your sister seem to really love the water!

Post swim class suck-sucks with sister

Your play stroller: You are Iyla will give each other rides and it is the cutest thing!

Walks! You adore being outside. You love going on meandering walks and playing at the park.

Puddles!

Your slide!

Baths! The more bubbles the better.

Tea set/art table: You love sitting at (and climbing ON!) the little kids table we have. You'll have little tea parties and explore all of sister's art supplies.

Name Game: You also love to name our facial features while poking pointing to them: eyes, nose, mouth, teeth, cheeks, eyebrow, ears, hair. We are working on the word GENTLE along with this game... ; )

Books: You've really gotten into your books this past month! You can request them by name, and will sit for long periods of time reading the same one over and over and over again.


Walking your play animals: Here's a funny video of you trying to walk all of your play animals at once- didn't work out so well!

Giving your physical prowless, you tend to have perpetual bruises and scrapes on your face! This past month you've scraped your nose 2 times, scratched lenses on two pairs of glasses, and gotten 1 really big bruise on your cheek.

Weezy the red-nosed toddler....

Bruise on the head, bruise on the cheek

You got a really good shiner on your cheek from pulling your high chair down on top of you!

Here are a few more photos from your past month:

Happy 17 months sweet Eloise Jane! We love you!

The Babe in Glasses

We have been on quite a journey with Eloise over the past month.

It all started at her 15 month appointment, when- after doing the flashlight-in-the-eyes exam- our doctor mentioned that Eloise had an 'abnormal red eye reflex" in her left eye.

Say WHAT?

I stopped the doctor right there and asked her to repeat what she had said as I feverishly wrote it down. She didn't act like it was a big deal, but then handed me the card to a pediatric opthamologist should we want to investigate it further.

When I called into the opthamologist's office, they got us an appointment within a week, saying that when kids got this diagnosis they wanted to get them in 'as soon as possible.'

Cue me getting on Google and FREAKING OUT about all of the possible dire outcomes this could result in, the scariest of which was a rare form of cancer called Retinblastinoma.

Of course the only appointment time the specialist had was at Eloise's nap time, and I knew the appointment was going to be extremely challenging. BC couldn't join me because he had a day of golf planned with the boys, and so it was I went solo with an overtired baby to the appointment. We drove 25 minutes to get there, waited another 20 to initially be seen, then had drops put in Eloise's eyes to dilate them for the exam. We then had to wait another 30 minutes for the drops to go into effect, at which time I had an overtired partially blind child running rampant throughout the exam room.

When the exam itself started, I had to hold Eloise's arms down as the doctor looked in detail at her eyes. That kid was NOT HAPPY.

The good, relieving news was that the diagnosis wasn't anything tragic or life threatening (thank GOD). The bad news was that Eloise's left eye has pretty bad vision, +4 on the farsightedness scale (meaning things up close aren't seen well with that eye). She has what is called anisometropic amblyopia, which means one eye sees drastically differently than the other. The risk there is that the brain will tend to use the 'good' eye and forget about the bad one, causing that bad eye's vision to worsen and sometimes causing the bad eye to go lazy and start crossing (which is often when parents first notice a problem).

What this meant for Eloise is that she needed corrective glasses ASAP to "wake up" her brain and have it start using the 'bad' eye in equal amounts to the 'good' eye. Her left eye will never get better, as this is something she was born with and has to do with the left eye actually being shorter in length.

I am so grateful this was caught early, but admittedly the diagnosis sent BC and I into mourning. Our beautiful little girl with the most beautiful big blue eyes would have to be in glasses all of her life (until she was old enough to wear a contact or eventually get surgery). We worried about her being teased by other kids or perceived as having something wrong with her by other adults. I started scanning the playgrounds at Iyla's school for kids in glasses, and would find maaaaaybe one in the crowd, and usually a boy at that.

I spent a few days in mourning before entering into my Mama Bear proactive research mode. I joined a FB group for parents of kids in glasses and started to learn all I could about kids' glasses brands, where to find them, how to get them fit correctly, etc.

It took a few weeks for me to finally get to a store with Eloise to try frames on, as I'd been waiting for the perfect time when BC could go as well. However, time was of the essence so I ended up going during that Week from Hell when BC was out of town.

Eloise was mostly a trooper trying on the frames, distracted by trying to eat all of the crayons she found in the store.

Here's the pair that was my favorite- frames that didn't compete with her beautiful eyes:

We also tried on some librarian-esque varieties:

As well as the most popular brand of baby glasses, Miraflex (due to their indestructibility):

 

These were a big NO for my baby! Cute on some kids, just not for Eloise.

There was a $300 price tag attached to ordering my favorite frames with prescription lenses, so I bit the bullet and put in an order.

I then discovered discount online frame sites! Several of these sites actually had a brand I was VERY interested in that no local stores carried- Dilli Dalli- in sizes small enough for Eloise. And free returns if they didn't fit! So I went about ordering up a pair of frames, and LOVED them when they came in:

Dilli Dalli Sprout frames (not yet with corrective lenses)

I then found out I could order frames WITH the prescription lenses (also with free returns!) for a fraction of the in-store price, to the tune of $90-$120 all in. Our first full set arrived just after Thanksgiving, Dilli Dalli Munchkin frames:

We LOVE them! They seem to tilt down a little to the left, which I hope can be fixed with an in-store adjustment (which I'll ask to be done when I go pick up the $300 glasses- least the guy can do, amIright?!).

The new challenge quickly became getting Eloise to KEEP THE GLASSES ON. She is in the height of toddler-hood and stubborn by nature, so Day 1 of glasses saw her continually pulling them off and trying to eat them.

However, yesterday on Day 2 she did MUCH better. I did ALL THE BRIBES to get her to keep them on, mostly telling her that once glasses were on she could watch her beloved Super Simple Songs videos.

And it WORKED.

She was still pulling them off every now and again, but we got through the majority of the day in glasses.

 Watching videos. She did get called "handsome" when out on a walk, which quickly saw me changing her into a pink shirt. ; )

This morning when I sat her on her potty I said we needed to say "good morning" to her glasses and she put them on her with NO FUSS.

Yesssssss

And so it is- my baby girl is now a glasses wearing baby, and darn it if we don't think she is the cutest glasses wearing baby there ever was!

Onward we go.....