16 months

What a big month for Sloane (pictured here with Pato, the love of her life).

Honestly, I was losing my mind toward the beginning of her 16th month. With all the stress of the holidays, including caring for the kids full time while also working a bit and hosting lots of family, I was not able to experience the joys of parenthood. And Sloane had a few rough days, especially when her molars were coming in.

But then a couple of awesome things happened. With all that free time over winter break, I had the opportunity to truly tune into Sloane and learn more about her. Most notably, I realized that she had hundreds of words if you only stop and listen for them. For example, one day I packed her in the Ergo and took her for a stroll around the neighborhood. As we approached a house decked with blue Christmas lights, she pointed and said "boo... boo." When we approached another house with multi-colored lights, she studied them and slowly identified, "el-lo," "gree" and "bur-ble." I couldn't believe it -- 15 months and she's identifying colors!

By the time, January rolled around (and our normal routines returned), I realized that Sloane had turned a major developmental corner. Because she now understands so much of what we say, she started adapting well to new situations. That means we can go out together as a family and instead of being out of sorts, she'll embrace the situation. She proved this to us when we went out to brunch as a family. The girl laughed and enjoyed the entire outing, somehow without dropping a single piece of french toast! It may seem like no big deal but to us it felt like the dawn of a new era.

She even likes Philz Coffee!

Sloane has been increasingly interactive with Riley, playing her version of hide and go seek with him (she hides in her closet and cracks up when he "finds" her). She's been sharing food with him and is starting to give him hugs and get excited when he enters a room. 

She loves visiting him at preschool (now I know what it means to remove someone "kicking and screaming!"). On this particular day, Sloane watched all the big kids jumping off some stairs and spent the next five minutes practicing her own pseudo-jumps. It was adorable. She really seems ready to join the preschool crowd.

Sloane has a ton of new words in both English and Spanish: Riley, mommy, mouth, strawberry, berries, bath, Pato, verde (green), este (this one) and more! One of my favorites is "Ow." It means hair. She realized that every time she pulled my hair I'd exclaim, "ow!" so she thinks that's what it's called. Ha!

Another favorite new word arrived last weekend when Riley and I were doing batting practice in the backyard. We took a break after his 50th hit, and I started playing with Sloane. She looked me in the eyes and said "base-ball...base-ball." It was labored, like she was working hard to get out both syllables. But she pronounced them perfectly. I was delighted, and she responded by saying it another dozen times.

Then she resumed a favorite past time: eating rocks.

She has also delighted me recently with her love of tickles. Her laugh is infectious! I just can't stop tickling her! Another thing that makes me laugh is her burps. She eats like crazy then burps like a trucker. It makes everyone around her laugh. She apparently finds humor in burps herself because she often fakes them just to crack me up. What a nut!

I am infatuated with this girl right now. It's crazy that just a month ago I was feeling extremely challenged by parenthood. But a few weeks ago it felt like we turned a major corner.

And look who we found there!