Morgan Dahl

18 Month Well-Visit

We went to the pediatrician yesterday for Morgan’s 18 month check-up.

• Weight: 22lbs, 12 oz (25th percentile)
• Height: 32 7/8 inches (80th percentile)
• Head: 19 3/8 inches (97th percentile)

She keeps creeping up in the weight-for-age percentile, so the doctor was pleased with that.  He said that he often tells people to move to 2% milk at 18 months, but since she isn’t in any danger of being overweight, we should keep her on whole milk.  She dropped a bit in height-for-age, but their measurements are fairly error prone.  They stretch out one leg, mark where her heel hits on paper and then trace an arc over the top of her head.  So who really knows?

Instead of asking us a half dozen questions (or so) about her development we had to fill out a questionnaire.  I think they do some pretty serious autism screening at 18 months.  She communicates wonderfully, uses tons of words, can follow instructions without pointing or leading, can use objects (hairbrush, spoon, etc.) correctly, can stack lots of blocks, can motor about as she should, etc.  The only thing they even asked about that she hasn’t started doing yet is stringing together words frequently/on her own.  She doesn’t say ‘bye-bye Daddy’ or ‘my milk’ or things like that yet.

We go back at 2 years and then only annually.  (We were last there for a check-up at 15 months and had one at 12 months as well.)

Happy New Year!

Eating with spoon

Feeding herself with a spoon is going much better in the last month or so.

A few Christmas and other snapshots

So hard to keep up…

Morgan is constantly changing.  Frankly, I don’t think we know half the stuff she is capable of.  For all I know, she can do calculus, I just haven’t thought to ask her to take a derivative yet.

She knows all sorts of animals and the sounds associated with them.  She learns lots of these at daycare, so we don’t know what she knows and doesn’t know.  For instance, she has a puzzle with a rooster on it and the other day she was saying ‘cock-a-doodle-do’ in that high sing-songy way that one does.  And so we learned that she knows the sound a rooster makes.  She knows about cows, horses, pigs, dogs, cats, birds, fish, etc.  And moo, neigh, oink (or snort), woof, meow, cheep-cheep, fish sounds, etc.  And for reasons that I don’t fully understand, she seems to be able to distinguish between a fish and a shark.

She knows and can say people’s names, including her Aunt Angie and Uncle Andy, her Great-Aunt Eva, and her cousin Caroline (which sounds like ‘line’).  She seems to call all grandparents, both male and female, ‘pop-pop.’  She still doesn’t say Mom (or any other associated names, like Mama or Mommy) very much at all, but she loves ‘Da.’

She used to only respond to questions with repetition, but now will answer questions with ‘yeah.’  For instance, if you ask her if she wants a snack, she used to respond ‘snack.’  Now she’ll say ‘yeah.’

Morgan has started saying ‘hi’ to people on the street/in the hallways.  Just the other week we were passing a guy in the hall and I said “Morgan, can you say hi?” And she said “No.”  Which made him snicker.  Then he gets 20 feet past us and she is yelling “hi! hi! hi!”

She is definitely learning her colors, including those like brown, white, and purple (as well as the more standard red, yellow, blue).

And last night for the first time she delivered an unprompted ‘please.’  She has this new bath toy in which the propeller winds up and then the toy motors around the bath (more or less).  She was loving this.  So she picks it up, thrusts it toward me, and says “please.”  I had been prompting her with “Can you say please?” in prior windings, so it wasn’t totally out of the blue, but I hadn’t prompted that particular one.  I then switched from giving her the word (please) to saying “What do you say?” when she would hand it to me.  She thought for a mere moment and then said ‘please.’

First snowfall of the season

From last weekend, very early this year for DC, are we finally in for a snowy winter?

Difficult to know what Morgan understands…

The other day I asked her to bring me something (I forget what now) out of her room.  She went back to her room, got it, and brought it out to me.  Could have been luck, but maybe not.

Tonight I was chatting with her while she was taking a bath.  Normally she appears to be ignoring me, as she was tonight.  My Dad was up watching her today (thanks!) and I was talking to her about it.   She blurted out “pop-pop.”  (This seems to be her current word for Grandpa.)  And I said “Yes, Pop-pop.  Did you guys have fun hanging out? Did you have a good time?”  To which I got an enthusiastic “yeah!”  Pretty cool.

Ah-choo!

Morgan has started saying ah-choo.  She does it after she sneezes.  She also does it after she coughs.  And after she burps. Pretty funny…