17 Months Old

Isolde turned 17 months old a few days ago - only one month to 1½ years old, which seems like a semi-birthday worth celebrating!

What's going on with Isolde at 17 months then? Well, she...

• stopped hiding stuff in the speaker.  Well, at least we're not missing anything right now.
• is getting better and better and walking down small/low steps (up is not that difficult) but she still can't be left alone near stairs.  She likes the slide at the playground but she finds climbing up to get there too much hard work and prefers if we just lift her up.  A little lazy streak!
• doesn't talk much yet, but I think she's added a new word - 'tta for sitta (sit).  When I try to get her to imitate words she just says "nae!" and giggles or turns her head away.  Not ready yet I guess or she just thinks it's a game that she doesn't know how to play yet.
• is getting a bit interested in watching children's programmes on TV such as Teletubbies or Bolibompa (Swedish children's show) programmes but luckily she doesn't watch it for long, which suits our limited TV policy. 
• has had a period of both being easy to put to bed in the evening and sleeping reasonably well at night.  She still stirs around midnight or 2am but it's usually possible to get her to go back to sleep in 10 minutes or so.  She usually wakes again at 4 or 5am when we usually bring her to our bed and she sleeps for another couple of hours.  There are mornings when she wakes up between 5 and 6 am and won't fall asleep again but lucky for me Peter takes most of the early mornings (well, all mornings almost).
• has moved on from raspberries to blueberries to grapes to peach as favourite fruit/berry.  It's so good that she eats banana nowadays (for when she started on solids to just a couple of months ago she didn't), as it's such a great snack.  She also likes to drink milk now, which she didn't either until just recently.
• is getting pretty good at drinking out of a glass - we figure it was good to have her practice before she starts pre-school in August (although they provide sippy cups too of course).  She still prefers to eat with her hands though, and uses the cutlery most to play with the food, except if it's soup or yoghurt; then she manages well with a spoon.
• plays quite a lot with her dolls including a Pippi one; hugging them, dressing them (or at least trying to), feeding them and giving them a ride in the pram.  Other fun toys are phones (toy and real ones), the pram, mum's handbag, anything out of the bottom drawers in the kitchen, a children's chair (Peter's old one) and the rocking train (which we probably have to return to the Wahlström family soon as Jack is getting to the age that he'll enjoy it).
• helps undressing and partly also dressing herself.  She can sit trying to put socks on for a long time.  It's strange how sometimes she has so much patience and sometimes nothing at all!
• naps every day, only about 40 minutes in the pushchair but 1½-2½ hours if she's in the crib.
• doesn't like to brush her teeth.  She doesn't cry or object in that way but she doesn't open her mouth much after the initial first few seconds, once she's "eaten" the toothpaste.  Luckily she only has 8 teeth yet but I'm keen to improve on the technique before she gets a full set.  It doesn't feel like a couple of strokes up and bottom is enough?  Any tips?  I need to look up that Bolibompa song I've heard about.
• likes singing gesture songs such as Itzy Bitzy Spider, En kulen natt, I ett hus vid skogen slut,  and Hoppe hoppe hare.  And a first and still favourite is Klappa händer så fort du kan, and she also likes when I clap with a doll or a teddy bear.
• can't help herself if there's music, she has to dance!
• likes blowing bubbles in the water in the tub and has now also realised she can do it in a cup of water or milk...
• can throw or kick a ball, not very far of course, but she knows how it's done.
• doesn't like the potty at all anymore and it's difficult to get her to pee on it (and poo is impossible).  It's like she knows what we're expecting but she doesn't want to and gets upset.  So we probably need to forget about it for a while and try later in the summer when we're outside in my parents' garden or Peter's parents' summer house and she can run around without a nappy on.
• is picky with her food at times and she wants another thing and when we give her that it's another thing and... So now we're trying to regain control.  She will just have to eat what's being served!  Unless we're heading out and it's in our interest that she has energy and she's not too cranky.
• really likes her little group of friends from our mum-dad group, especially two other girls she hangs out at least once a week and sometimes twice or even three times.  She's especially close with one of them who likes to hug and kiss as much as Isolde does, and who can take a bit of rough treatment.  The two boys in the group are very calm and quite shy, and especially one of them almost gets afraid when Isolde approaches him unfortunately.

And so much more!