18 Months Old

Sleep- Aurora started sleeping through the night consistently around 14 months old. However, teeth are constantly messing that up. Whenever a tooth starts coming through Aurora has issues sleeping, and the second it pops through she for the most part can get back to sleeping through the night. Due to our recent move across the country sleep got pretty rocky for a bit. Paired with a possible 18 month sleep regression it was pretty rough. Aurora became very clingy. She not only needed us to stay in the bedroom while she fell asleep, but sometimes required a hand to be touching her at all times as well. After finally moving into our new house, getting her crib back, and molars all being popped through I think it is safe to say she is for the most part sleeping through the night again...until more teeth come.

Eat- Eating for the most part has stayed the same. I have noticed that as she gets older Aurora is not as open to trying new foods. She will only eat what she knows she already likes, which is pretty opposite of what she was like when she was a baby. I'm hoping this is just a toddler thing and she will grow out of it. Right at 18 months Aurora is figured out how to stab food with a fork and bring it to her mouth. She is pretty proud of herself every time she does it. I want to start working on spoon feeding too.

Play- Aurora LOVES to sing songs. Her favorites are twinkle twinkle little star and old mcdonald. She still loves reading books (over and over and over) and is starting to show an interest in stuffed animals. She loves her shape sorting bucket, and can put the right shapes in the right holes most of the time with out any help. She also loves doing flash cards, and taking them from me and putting them all over the house. Her new favorite show to watch is blues clues, which I think is incredibly cute because that was my favorite show as a child.

Milestones- This girl is SMART. If you take the time to sit down and teach her anything, she will pick it up pretty quick. She can sing her ABCs, point to and say any letter in any order. She can count 1-20 (with a few exceptions), point to and say any number 1-20, she knows basic shapes, colors, and animal sounds. It blows my mind. She recently started to be able to jump off of the ground, and can climb up and down stairs with out help. She has picked up a ton of vocabulary in the last six months. She started talking more at around 15 months, and her first sentence was at 16 months. She can mimic most words you ask her to, and can say small sentences such as "thank you", "change butt", "I love you", "peek a boo", "all done", "night night" etc

Stats- 2T clothes, size 6 diapers, lbs, inches

Sneak Peaks

Say hello to the new Clay house...Alaska editition!

We are so excited and so incredibly thankful for the new opportunities.

More to come soon!

New Adventure (again!)

Yay! Due to a job promotion for the hubby, the Clay family is headed back to Alaska!

We can NOT wait to show little Aurora all the wonders of Alaska that we loved so much, like the aurora borealis that we named her after.

 By the way that is totally a real picture we took in Denali National Park last time we lived there!

  

Aurora's 1 year birthday

Theme: You are my cupcake (after her favorite book)

Where: The little gym 1pm-3pm

Pictures:

Happy Birthday my cuppy cake. It's been a honor to be your mommy for this last year 💜

7-12 months old

Sleep: Around 7-8 months Aurora more consistently started to nap for 2 hours, which helped me easily transition her to 2 naps a day. Around the same time she started refusing her binky and would throw it across the room when I tried to rock her to sleep. Her independent personality started to show through, and this made sleeping without the binky and learning to fall asleep on her own very easy as well. The new sleep routine would be go in, turn on her lullabies, rock her standing up for three songs, place her down, and walk out the door (instead of rocking her in the chair for three songs with a binky and putting her down already asleep). She would roll around for a little while and wedge herself into the corner of the crib and fall asleep. If she cried I would go back in and do the same thing, but she rarely cried. It actually made me sad after a while that she wanted to do it all on her own. After Aurora mastered rolling she preferred to sleep on her stomach with her little butt in the air. This also seemed to help her sleep a little better. Around 10 months she started napping for 3 hours, so I just put her to bed a little earlier and transitioned from 2 naps a day to 1 nap a day fairly easy as well. Eventually she was able to stay up a little longer and go back to her normal bed time. Sleep schedule generally looked like; 6am wake, 10am-1pm nap, 7pm bed. Still consistently wakes up once (sometimes twice) randomly in the middle of the night for a bottle.

Eat: Around 9-10 months Aurora started to be able to finger feed real food. She loved bananas and yogurt for breakfast, cheese for snack, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or fiber one bars with strawberries or cut up grapes for lunch, and chicken with green beans for dinner. Her favorite food by far is cheese. No interest in fork or spoon feeding.

Play: Occasionally liked being in her bouncer and spinning the red bird around, but never really got into jumping. After a while I stopped putting her in it because it was more of a baby holder than a stimulating toy for her. Once she started to be able to sit she loved hitting all the buttons on her walker and watching things light up. And once she could stand she loved pushing the walker around. Still loves all her chunky puzzles (for mostly chewing) and watching mickey mouse, sesame street, and busy beavers on youtube. Loves singing songs and dancing. Got the dance mat from "B" for christmas and LOVES dancing on it. My mom gave her my grandmom's Minnie mouse and it is her favorite stuffed animal to hug. Still read books every night before bed, and still loves turning the pages. Now she can pick what book she wants and bring it to you to read.

Milestones: This kid is CRAZY! Seriously, she is so active and just wanted to go go go. She's always been like that since the day she was born. Always moving and fidgeting. Started crawling forward at 32 weeks, standing at 34 weeks, pulling up independently at 35 weeks, and walking at 37 weeks. No kidding! Once she figured out how to move there was no stopping her. By 39 weeks she was full blown walking across the whole living room with out holding on to anything. Aurora tend to figure out how to do something, and the obsess over it until she masters it entirely, then moves on to something new. Of course I'm bias, but I think she is very intelligent.

Stats: 9 months- 28 in, 20.1 lbs

12 months- 30 in, 21 lbs