17 Months Old

Little miss independent wants to do everything on her own these days. She is pretty strong willed and opinionated (wouldn't expect anything less from my daughter). I guess our philosophy with her is "you can't always get what you want" (sometimes to the tune of the Rolling Stones song). This often results in little fits of screaming, but she knows we don't give in so it doesn't last long. 

She is still such a precious little girl with a great personality. She laughs out loud a lot (we call it her Grandmama laugh). People are just drawn to her when we take her places...she pretty much demands attention. 

A couple of things we have been working on this month have been limiting the pacifier time and getting her to go to sleep on her own in her crib. Both have been pretty successful. She has quickly learned to put her paci down in the crib before we leave the bed in the mornings and to take it out when we get her out of the carseat (I will give it to her in the car a lot of times because I want her to get a nap). She definitely associates it with being tired or sleeping. She asks for it when we get in the car (didn't really mean to make this a habit, but somehow it has gotten that way). 

Going to sleep on her own has gone so much better than we could have ever imagined. After 3 nights of 20-30 minutes of screaming before falling asleep, she started crying for just about 5-10 minutes and then another 5-10 of quietly laying there before going to sleep. The past three nights she asked to go to bed and went down without a fuss at all. (I am backdating this post) Tonight (Monday) she didn't even seem to be tired as she was playing and running around. When it got close to 9pm I asked her if she was ready to put on her pajamas and go to bed and she said yes and went toward the stairs. I got her ready for bed and let her walk back into the living room in front of me. She went straight for the stairs and I took her up and she went right to bed and was asleep within 5 minutes. I knew she was tired on Saturday and Sunday night, but it is nice to know this is going to be a routine even when she isn't completely exhausted. It just shows the power of a routine in their lives. Now the next task is to get this to work for nap time!