Lexi can climb. It was one thing when she learned to walk - gates and putting everything on the counters kept her out of trouble - but now she can climb. Since I’ve typed those two sentences she has climbed on a stool to reach the counter top. Her diaper bag is on the counter and she’s rummaging through it for a “NACK!” (that’s Lexi for snack). Now she’s climbing from the kitchen chair to the table. I’m waiting for the day when she realizes if she pushes the chair over to the bar stool she can scale those up onto the counter and reach the cupboard with all of her “NACKS!” in it.

(BTW, NACK is always typed in all caps because Lexi never asks for a NACK in a normal tone. She almost always yells it.)

Lexi’s vocab is ever increasing and she’s starting to retell stories of things she’s done or seen. And they get repeated about a thousand times for weeks after the event.

Some of her stories include:

“Papa. House. Coo Coo. Vroom. Vroom.” (That would be the story of going to Grandpa’s house, seeing his pigeons and sitting in his antique truck and “driving”.)

“Elsie. Ball. Bye.” (Elsie and Lexi played ball last Wednesday and then Elsie’s mom told Elise to say goodbye to Lexi.)

“Nomino. House. Ooh-lee. House. Sleeping. Shhhhh.” (Domino, the dog that lives nextdoor, and his owner, Julie, are in their house sleeping.)

“Ari. Mimi. Home.” (Her cousin Ari, Grammy, and Aunt Joanna went home after a visit.)

“See? Baby? Bath?” (She wants to watch the video of Caleb getting his first bath - again.)

She’s also started requesting things. Everytime it’s mealtime or snack time, if you ask her what she wants to eat, it’s always “hot dogs and cheese.” Tonight her request was for ice. When I started to fill her water bottle with ice water she started saying “no, no, water. Milk.” Then I tried giving her a cup of milk. “No, no. Ice.” Finally, I asked if she wanted ice in her milk. Yup.

Lexi is almost 15 months. That means that according to the state of Minnesota next month she will officially be a toddler and old enough to go to day care. Crazy.

In the past month or so Lexi has learned to do and say so much. She’s not a baby anymore.

She can stand up with out pulling herself up.
She can turn on her CD player (and knows which CD’s she likes and turns off those she doesn’t like)
She plays with toys the “right” way. Tonight she was actually putting her stacking rings back on the post instead of just taking them off and flinging them around her room.
She finds certain things funny - like chasing the dogs, playing tug with the dogs (okay, just acting like a dog in general), running away from you when she’s only wearing a diaper (or in some cases complete naked), laughing when we laugh.
She’s learning how to run and how to climb stairs.
She walks and crawls.
She has favorite books that she can “read” to herself. She’ll read Carl the Dog and say “doggie, woof, woof” when she sees Carl, she opens the flaps of her Peek-a-Boo book and says “peek-a-boo”.
She loves to give hugs and kisses.
She knows her bottle is kept in the fridge and will try and open the door to get it, while saying “ba-bol”
She can say hi, mama, dada, doggie, woof, bottle, Mazie, hey, whoa, rock-rock (she says this while on her rocking moose, in a rocking chair and in her swing), bobo, move, go away, and uh-oh. (bobo, move and go away are always said to the dogs)
She can sign please, more, all done, and down.
She can make a noise like a duck, a horse, a monkey, a dog (barking, whinning and panting), a cat, and a bird.
She can quote the scene from the Simpson’s where Homer is making calming ocean noises to lull Marge to sleep. Lexi will say “Wee-ooh, wee-ooh.” and then make loud seagull noises.
She also has a few words that she says all the time but we have no clue what she’s talking about.
She can point out her head, nose, mouth, feet and belly.

I’m constantly amazed by how much she has learned and how quickly she will learn something new.

It’s fun to watch her grow up.

Update: Lexi can also say bye-bye and ball.

Just in case you were keeping track, Lexi is now mobile. All at once she has learned how to push herself into a sit, pull herself up into a stand, crawl, walk along furniture and holding onto walls, and take 2 or 3 steps on her own. We also bought her a toy that she can walk behind, so when she’s really motivated she’ll use it to get from point A to point B. What this means is that she can now get to wherever she wants and pull whatever she wants off the shelves. Lucky for us I started packing and have 99% of our bookshelves completely boxed up. All that’s left on shelves are her toys.

Lexi had her one year check-up today. For those of you just dying to know she weighs 21 lbs 6 oz and is 30 inches long. Which means she’s in the 50% for weight and 75% for height. She had to get two shots which usually results in a 5 second silent scream and then all out screaming and sobbing. Tonight however she got the first shot and was a little startled but it didn’t bother her. By the second shot she realized what was going on - she cried, but the crying lasted until she was sitting up again. Not bad for getting stabbed twice in less than 30 seconds.

One entertaining thing about the visit, the clinic updated their system to make appointments more informative and to keep better track of patient information, etc. However, our doctor did not quite understand the system yet so she kept entering things wrong and had to go and get the staff member that was doing the training to come and talk her through it. If I was in a hurry or Lexi was crabby I would have been really frustrated waiting for her to figure the computer program out, but since Lexi loves to wander around in only her diaper and we weren’t in a hurry, it was mildy amusing watching a normally self-confident, competent doctor muddle her way through the new system. In the end we did get a neat print out of our visit (after 2 attempts at trying to print…).

Lexi has learned how to say hi. And she is not shy about greeting anyone and everyone who will listen to her. At swim lessons tonight anyone who even looked in her direction got a nice clear, “hi!” And if Lexi didn’t get a response from them, she repeated herself, and if that didn’t get a response, she would just start to yell. That’s her latest trick - yelling. She has discovered that she can make her voice extremely loud. Have you ever heard a speech coach or a choir director start a sentence and then in the middle of it say the phrase “you need to speak from your diaphram” and their voice seems to carry twice as far? Well, I think Lexi has learned how fun it is to be that loud. She talks to herself, her mirror, Pinky the bear, the dogs, her feet, as loud as she can, and keeps it up forever. At first it was cute, now it’s just loud.

Lexi survived her first day of high school. The child development class we went to ended up having about 8 or 9 babies show up. The girls in the class had pre-written questions that they came around and asked all the moms. They were pretty generic questions about baby development. Most of my conversations went like this:
Abby: Hi!
Shy Student: um, hi.
A: So di dyou have anything you wanted to ask me?
SS: Um, yeah. (deep breath) Howoldisyourbaby?whatisyourbaby’sdiet?howlongdotheysleep?whatisyourbabiesfavoritetoy?doesyourbabycry?

As I respond, the student frantically scribbles down answers, mumbles thanks and moves on to the next mom.

Still, it was a pretty fun morning and Lexi managed to keep a smile on her face despite missing a morning nap.

Okay, so I admit it, I’ll take any excuse to show off my baby. On June 2, Lexi and I are going to a child development class. One of the highschoolers in my youth group gets extra credit if she brings a mom and baby to class that day. So it’s for a good cause - supporting a student’s academic career is always a good cause, right?

From the limited information I have, we are basically going to hang out, Lexi lounging on a blanket with her toys and me answering questions - probably trying to deter a bunch of highschoolers from having sex. They also want to observe what a baby Lexi’s age does. At 8:10 in the morning here’s what Lexi does: sleep. That’s it.

I’ll let you know how it goes.