Last week when Jenn and I were both off we raked up enough leaves in the front yard one day so that Abbi could play in them. Its not that she asked to play in them, but we were hoping that she might enjoy it. She played for about 5 minutes or so and then her interest seemed to wain so we went inside to do other things. But speaking of interest in things, yesterday while we were watching the football games, Abbi spent at least 30 minutes, I'd say maybe 45 playing with some Mr. Potato Head toys. We have this huge collection of stuff someone gave Jenn and Abbi just sat and played on her own, completely content for a very long time!

Leaves

The last few days I've been able to spend quite a bit of time with Abbi, and now that Jenn is off from work until Monday we'll all be spending a good bit of time together as a family. Yesterday we spent time together playing with Abbi's DUPLO LEGOs. I bought them for her quite a while ago and she wasn't to interested in them then, but as she's getting older her interest does seem to be increasing which is fun to watch.

Toys

Saturday morning Abbi was playing in her tent and apparently Max was playing wit her. I wasn't able to see any of this first hand because I was thankfully sleeping away upstairs. But also thankfully, Jenn took a few shots of them. Apparently Max was going in and out of the tent with Abbi. I'm sure it was a sight to see!

Playing with Max

Abbi's having a bit of a rough week. She's been recovering from the laser treatment last week, and then two days ago she started showing signs of a cold. By yesterday morning she was in full blown cold mode with a runny nose and congestion. So that's still going on today and probably through the weekend. Nothing a little childrens Tylenol can't help fix, but its still hard to see her not so happy.

As for this picture, the other day at Chick-Fil-A Abbi decided to help herself to some of Jenn's tea. Its cute to see such little hands grab on and hold onto a huge-o cup.

Big Drink

Each morning Abbi devours something. A banana, cheese stick, cereal or in this case, blueberries. She loves foot and loves her fruits too. She was chilling on our bed eating her blueberries this morning while I finished getting dressed. She sat patiently eating and when she was done, she made sure I knew and we headed downstairs get on with our day.

Eating Breakfast

Jenn works with Abbi each night on reading books. I remember when she first started reading they were often upside down and she didn't look at the books very long. Now she has a concept of what the proper way up is and she actually seems to take a few moments to take in the content on each page. Here you can see her looking at one of her books before bed.

Reading

This time, I'm much closer to the 13th than I have been in the past! Abbi turned 16 months old this past Saturday and just like every other months, she just keeps getting bigger and smarter.

I think the biggest difference for Abbi this past month is her speech development. We've put a larger focus on it for her and she's reacted positively to it. I posted earlier this month she's learned to say "uh-oh" most of the time with proper context and this past weekend she really developed the word "no", unfortunately. She's also got a form of "sock" that she says, and she has her own word for Max, we're just not entirely sure what it is. So she's making good progress, and hopefully she'll get more recognizable words out as we go along.

In other motor development, she's been very interested in coloring the past month. With Jenn's help she's learned how to color pretty well, and it looks like she favors her right hand. She can hold big or small crayons and color on paper, and just about anything else. One big hurdle right now is to get her to color ONLY on paper.

In addition to learning new things, we've had to step up the commitment to timeouts for her. She's still hitting and of course getting into more and more things she shouldn't. She takes the timeout well, usually just standing in the corner patiently waiting to be told she's done. She always shows remorse when she comes out of timeout, so I do believe it is having some positive effect.

I think that about sums Abbi up at this point. She still runs around, everywhere, and loves the dog to death. The other day at dinner she decided to sit on him and see what he would do. He let her sit on him for about 30 seconds before he decided he'd had enough. Its just like the e-trade commercial, only I support her riding the dog.

16 Months