14 months

So really I'll just post pictures and stories about this past weekend...

Saturday, we had a few graduation parties to attend. The bulk of comments were: She's HOW old? (as in she's too young to be as active as she is!)

At my adviser's, she found the plastic tray where they set the dog's water and food bowls. The food bowl was empty, but the water bowl had some water in it. She sat down on the tray and then proceeded to dump the water bowl onto the tray and got her overalls soaking wet. So, she spent some time running around in her onesie until we went out to the car to change her diaper and get out the spare pair of pants.

At her cousin's party, there were lots of other kids and babies and she gave one of the babies a continual hug. She also played with the ice in the buckets where there were drinks chilling, and ate lots of chocolate and vanilla ice cream... That was probably her biggest highlight.

For my birthday, Caitlin got me the Infantino squeeze station which is pretty awesome! Juliana likes them because she can "feed herself" and I like them because since they're "novel" compared to eating with her fingers or from a spoon, she's more likely to finish eating from them. We made three different recipes this weekend: Broccoli and sweet potato, Apple with pear and barley,  and Pumpkin with apple, banana, peaches, yogurt, and spices

At school, in the late afternoon the toddlers all sit against the wall and drink their milk. For naps, they sleep on mats. So I think this combination of "cues" is why she gravitates to the mat we have at our sliding door in the kitchen. I've asked her to sit on it and drink her milk once before, and she will drag the mat into the living room and pretend to lay down on it as if she were going to take a nap. While we were making her squeeze pouches Saturday morning, she got her fat separator from the dishwasher and was "mixing" with her spatula. She really likes the fat separator because she can remove and put back the black rubber spout blocker.

Sunday, the nearby family orchard was having a strawberry festival where you could pick your own strawberries. I remember doing this with my family and then making huge batches of strawberry jam. Plus, I thought this might be a fun activity for her since she likes to pick things up off the ground... Here she is in the backpack, complete with her sun hat and sunglasses.

 At the orchard, they have lots of activities and this was a wooden train that kids can crawl on, so she's took a seat and started observing all the kids and craziness around her.

 We put her in the backpack to hike up to the field, but then once we got up there, we got her out of the backpack to allow her to get involved with us picking the few ripe strawberries which were left. She would pick a strawberry out of the box, squeeze it to a pulp in her hand, and then put it back into the box and grab another one. We had to keep intervening so she wouldn't smush all of the strawberries!

 Here, she picked up a strawberry, squeezed it, and then tasted it. No, it wasn't washed first, yes it probably could've made her sick, but oh well. Life with this toddler means I pick and choose my battles very carefully... And eating a freshly picked strawberry seemed like the least of my possible concerns!

Hopefully you can tell from these pictures just how hot it was (mid 80s). Her hair is definitely growing, slowly but surely! Again, I'm perfectly fine with it not growing much more for awhile, or at least until she learns to sit still for longer than 2 seconds since long hair means styling, brushing, blow drying, etc!

When we got home from the strawberry festival, she took a nap and then I took her outside to see how Brian was doing working on a friend's dump truck. She IMMEDIATELY gravitated to a crescent wrench laying in the grass. She didn't care that it was covered in grease, and even put it in her mouth. By the end, her feet were black, her hands were black, she had grease on her face, knees, backs of her legs, etc. She didn't really seem to care that she was barefoot in the grass, but she didn't like to put her hands down on the grass if she tripped. After she got so dirty, she took her first shower (with Dad assisting) to get all the grease off. She is really good about water in her face, and we've even graduated her to taking baths in the full bathtub instead of her little bathtub. The only issue is she won't lay down in the water. She insists on standing up or sitting down (on HER terms). So it'll be interesting once we get the opportunity to go to a pool. The first skill they say you should teach a baby/toddler is to float on their back...

When I took her to day care Monday morning, she was a little bit hesitant to get down with the "boys" since they were running and screaming around the room. But once she did get down (she's the shortest one, by far, in the Young Toddler room. Not to mention the youngest. Most of the other 1 year olds are still in the infant room), she moved to hug a young boy, J. But when she hugged him, she just kept walking and basically plowed him over, pushing him down and falling with him. J didn't seem phased by it, Juliana sorta whimpered a bit but recovered quickly. Then she saw her "buddy" a little girl, M. Apparently she and M give each other hugs and kisses and whenever we arrive in the morning M always points at her and says "Hi!" (all the boys point at Juliana as well when she arrives. I have a feeling she is the princess of the room...) Anyway, I guess she was trying to give M a hug, but M wasn't in the mood and started crying. This scared Juliana so she quickly turned to come running back to where I was standing, but there was a little boy laying on the ground and Juliana tripped over his head and fell. Juliana ended up crying at that point, so I picked her up and calmed her down before I was able to get her back down to play with everyone else.

Communication Updates:
- When you mention that it's time to change her diaper she will do the sign for diaper (patting her hip) and say "Biber" This still doesn't mean that she likes getting her diaper changed... She hates to be restricted in her movement (aka being still and on her back so we can get the dirty off and put a clean one on...), plus it normally means it's disrupted her playtime.
- When we were at the chiropractor's on Friday, they had a little monkey figurine and I said, "that's a monkey" and she said "Ah ah ah ah!" like a monkey. So she definitely learned that one at day care.
- She's also learned to identify Elmo from day care. Whenever they change diapers, I guess they have a picture of Elmo somewhere on the ceiling because they always ask the kids to point out Elmo, Big Bird, or Cookie. The only Elmo we have is an Elmo Boo-Boo Buddy (small ice pack). I pulled it out on Sunday because she managed to pull the belgin waffle maker out of the cabinet and onto her foot (yes, it bruised). So we put Elmo on her foot and when she saw him she said "Elbow!" In the mornings, I'll put on music through Spotify while I'm making eggs and so we've been listening to "Elbow." However, once she's identified "Elbow" everything she wants to point out and identify is "Elbow"
- In her animal book she can now point to the cat, dog, duck, and fish. She probably could identify more animals, but she won't sit still long enough for us to point out and say the name of the animals...
- She's shaking her head "yes" and "no" very consistently and vigorously when you ask her a question. Sometimes instead of shaking her head yes she'll say "Ah"
- When she's eating something she likes (eggs, salmon, spinach, just as examples), she snatches the food item up off the tray, quickly puts it into her mouth and normally accompanies the action with a grunt or a cartoon "nom nom" type of sound. I don't know that words can properly describe it!