that janie girl...

I've been really bad at keeping track with Jane, which was the main reason I decided to blog.  So, I'm recommitting myself.  I really want to keep track of how my children are during the different stages of their lives so that one day if they ask me, "What was I like?" all of the years of child-rearing wearing on my memory won't matter because I KEPT TRACK.  Maybe.

Jane at 15 months:

Jane is just starting to talk.  Actually, she's been "talking" for months now.  She would have full conversations of nonsense words with us, and she'll even end with a self-satisfied laugh and goofy grin.  However, she now has a few words that she uses in her everyday play:  Mama (Maum-maum), Dada (Dad-dad), baby (bayyyy-BEE), eye (hhhhhigh), hot (huh-huh), hi (eye), more (mo), and banana (nana).  For everything else there's some sort of gesture accompanied by a hiss or an animal sound.

In addition to her humble vocabulary, Jane also knows some basic baby sign language (Yes, I taught her baby sign, despite the criticism and mockery I've received from some of my family members).   These include "milk" (not  surprisingly it was the first one she learned), "eat", "more", "book", "water", "hot", "butterfly","hat" and "lotion" (hat and lotion were her own additions).

Her attention span is really short, but she loves books!  Most toys keep her interest for one minute or less, and that's not exaggerating.  However, she will sit and page through a book--even grown-up books that have no pictures--for several minutes at a time.  Offering to read her a book is one of the best ways to distract or placate her.  She also has Jaffy, her Giraffe/bicycle/noise maker.  Jaffy can entertain her for several minutes at a time, although it comes at a cost to Mom and Dad with how loud it is.  The last effective method of entertainment is sorting.  This baby LOVES to sort.  She will take a group of any kind of objects (bobby pins, rocks, oyster crackers, buttons, blocks, etc.) and move them from place to place.  She especially loves it if I give her some kind of container--a baggie, a purse, or a bowl--to put them in. She loves to try to gather them all in her hands at once and move them to a new location or container.

Much to our dismay, Jane appears to have some sort of intolerance to dairy or lactose. We are still working on identifying the problem.  All we know is that if she has even a small taste of something with milk or dairy in it, she has two really bad nights.  The second is usually worse.  On top of that, she is an extremely picky eater.  This comes hard to her parents, who happen to love nearly all foods and like most everything else.  Her menu is pretty limited:  chicken nuggets, hot dogs (usually made of turkey), cereal, bread, crackers, peanut butter, almond milk, grapes, oranges, apples, and other fruits (though not bananas anymore), ketchup, and occasionally french fries.  She does not like eggs, baked potatoes, vegetables, hamburger, or beans.  No wonder she's 8th percentile for weight!!!  If anyone has suggestions on what I can feed her that has no dairy, I  would love some ideas.

Jane is also just learning the value of a good "Peek-a-boo" game.  She actually hides for a moment, then pops out and looks for your reaction.  If your reaction stays good, you are guaranteed a 5-10 minute session of the EXACT SAME THING.  Although sometimes boring for Mom, it's worth her sweet giggles.

Her favorite songs are "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree", "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star", "How Much is that Doggy in the Window", "Bingo", "Old MacDonald", and "The Itsy, Bitsy Spider".

A few more fun facts:  she has a nutty sense of humor, she likes to hit her head on things, she loves dogs, she likes to dance, she has beautiful hair with curls in the back, she walks like her mommy (in other words, she walks like a duck),

We love our little Janers!