Chris and Kristen + 2: 15 Months-February 2012

Hannah and Owen are 15 months old and we are loving every minute with them! Our house if full of life, energy, and moments that make us laugh. Their personalities come out more and more each day and it seems as if each day they learn something new. They are getting so big and truly look like toddlers now. At their 15 month check up Hannah weighed 27 lbs 12 oz and was 32.5 inches tall (95%). Owen weighed 28 lbs and was 33.5 inches tall (off the growth chart for his age). Their height makes it possible to reach just about anything close the edge of a table or on the stove. Owen has also recently figured out how to open the closet doors in his room. They are wearing 18-24 month clothes and I am buying 2t for the summer. Hannah is a 5.5 wide shoe and Owen measured 6.5 wide for shoes.

Yes, they are sitting in their Mega Bloks bin and daddy took them for a ride!

Owen's Kissy Face

Watching the world go by...

Should my 15 month old be able to look at the window? Owen can and enjoys this past time daily. We still have to pull the blinds up because he thinks it is great fun to finger them and tease us by pulling the blinds away from the window.

Hannah loves to blow raspberries.

Look at them-remember when Hannah's feet just dangled in the air and neither would hold on? Now they climb on their froggy rocker almost without assistance and can rock without help too!

Hannah and Owen love to play with all their toys each day! Hannah loves her stuffed animals and baby dolls. Owen likes his Sesame Street guitar, Noah's Ark, the shape sorter, and his pushable ball popper. They both enjoy Mega Bloks (especially when daddy builds towers taller than Hannah and Owen), puzzles-Owen actually puts the pieces in, balls which they enjoy throwing, and their Leap Frog Fridge Farm and Car Wash-they like to dance to the music and they laugh when they create silly combinations. Probably 1/4 of their day is spent reading books. It cracks us up to see them sitting down looking at a book all by themselves which they do often. They like almost all of their books, but their current favorites are anything with Sesame Street characters, Noah's Ark (for which Owen has hand motions for big boat and hammering to go along with the words), A Cuddle for Little Duck, and You're My Little Bunny. They have hand motions and sounds down to match the pages of many of their books and will often do them one page before. The things they learn and know at this age amazes me on a daily basis. They like games such as pat a cake, hide and seek, and where is thumbkin?.

Owen gets so tickled when Daddy builds such a silly, tall tower. He laughs and walks close to it unsure of whether to touch it or not. Eventually it ends up knocked down with Owen looking at the pieces in disarray with outstretched arms as if to say what happened?!

Owen and Granddad love to rock with Owen's Sesame Street guitar!

It's not enough for Owen to walk with one ball popper-he has to use them both at the same time!

It amazes me that Owen and Hannah will sit and listen to these stories from cover to cover. They are also very good at picking out Sesame Street characters when asked and they both like to find the little black dog that appears in the smaller Sesame Street board books. Chris and I both have these books memorized-that's how often they've been read. Sometimes we read them multiple times in a row.

Daddy is so much fun!

They both enjoy animals-Owen's favorite animal for awhile has been a giraffe. He gravitates to them and always picks them out first. Hannah loves dogs (stuffed animal dogs, dogs in books, and dogs in the neighborhood which we look for on every walk). She has also made us laugh by grinning and squealing at a tapir and porcupine in a Black and White they have-those will be hard to reproduce in stuffed animals! They can both made a pig sound (sort of) by wrinkling their nose and blowing in and out and Owen goes "mmmm" when you ask him what a cow says.

They are both saying mama and dada and it is the sweetest thing ever! They make lots of sounds now and seem to babble all the time. It's funny how it sometimes sounds like a few real words together. Hannah says night night and no no. She will repeat go and seems to have a sound combination for her lovey, Freckles. They both will shake their heads no often and we are working on nodding our heads for yes. They point at everything and love looking at pictures of friends and family on our refrigerator.

They are healthy eaters (you probably figured this out from their doctor's report). They are now eating lunch meat and they like Gerber chicken sticks. Owen has also enjoyed his Nana's meatloaf, hamburger quiche, and mommy's brisket. It still takes Hannah multiple (meaning more than 10) encounters with new food before she decides to eat it. They love puffs, melts, and what we call cheesie poofs for snacks. They eat all kinds of fruit and seem to like them equally-although watching them polish off blueberries cracks me up. In one week we go through a bunch of bananas, a large clamshell of blueberries, several kiwis, usually 2 pears, a couple of fruit cups or applesauce, and we recently added strawberries to list. Owen eats vegetables as well as fruit and loves broccoli/cauliflower, carrots, peas, green beans, and avocado. They both love sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes (which they like to feed themselves), and black beans and we usually go through one can of these a week (their pediatrician thought this was funny). Hannah is still hesitant to pick up vegetables from her tray although she is becoming more willing to try them; however, they usually are spit right back out. She still eats a pouch of vegetables mixed with fruit for dinner, but recently I have been able to add in chopped carrots, green beans, or peas. They both like pasta-they think wagon wheels are great because they can put them on their finger, grilled cheese, english muffins, bagel thins, apple cinnamon oatmeal, and blueberry waffles. They often eat yogurt for lunch and Owen enjoys cubes of cheese. They are drinking all 2% milk and enjoy their sippy cups with straws.

Owen finds a new use for the oven drawer other than to store their collection of measuring cups, storage containers, and silicone bakeware that they get to "cook" with.

He gets in easily, but hasn't figured out it is easier to get out from the side than from the front.

Right now they are still taking 2 naps a day-one around 10/10:30 and then again between 3/3:30pm. They go to bed between 7/7:30pm each night. Before bed they get on their pajamas, have milk in their highchair while watching the goodnight show on Sprout, have mommy and daddy brush their teeth and wash their face and hands, then we read 4 goodnight stories before they go to bed. On nights that they take a bath all we have to do is say the word bath and they are practically running down the hall and trying to open up the bathroom door.