I forgot how much I love this age. At sixteen months, Avery provides the cuteness of a newborn – but with less of the work! And the description of her sister at this age is true of Avery, as well: “She’s always running around and smiling, playing make-believe games, imitating us, and saying and waving ‘hi’ to people around her.”

Some of Avery’s best stuff: She continues giving lots of “kissies,” and one of her first un-requested ones came a few weeks ago. (I told her I loved her and she leaned in to give me a smooch.) Like with Zoe, she’s always saying and waving “hi” and also “bye,” and she recently started “singing” and dancing (i.e. swaying) to music. She’s mischievous; as mentioned the other day, she knows when she’s doing something she’s not supposed to do and will look at me with a big smile to see if I’m watching. (Luckily, she usually listens and stops what she’s doing once I ask.) And one of her new favorite games: Jump on Zoe’s bed, bury her head in the pillow like she’s asleep, and giggle.

A big change in the last month is her interaction with Zoe – they’re playing with one another more and more often. They recently started chasing each other around the house, and they like to play a peek-a-boo-type game in Zoe’s bed. They also just like to be around one another: Avery gets super excited when she sees her sister in the mornings, and the other night when Zoe was napping on the couch, Avery ran up to her in excitement and tried to wake her up. And just this morning, Zoe said she wanted Avery to sit at her table and eat breakfast with her, so “she can keep me company.”

In terms of communication, Avery has picked up a few words since our last update. She can say “bye,” “no,” and “thank you” – though sometimes the latter comes out sounding more like “da duh.” (A few weeks ago, we started asking her “What do you say?” after giving her things, and she now replies with “thank you” most of the time.) Her level of understanding is also growing – she can follow all sorts of commands (“Go show Daddy,” “Give this to Zoe”) and just yesterday her hand shot up when I asked in the car, “Who wants Mommy to sing?” (That’s the first time she’s done that.)

Avery’s (belated) 15-month appointment was just last week, and we found out that she’s 24 lbs, 10 oz. and 34.25 inches tall. That puts her in the 75 percentile for weight and 95 for height (and, interestingly, makes her slightly lighter but 2 inches taller than Zoe was at that age).

At a party recently, someone mentioned that Avery was a serious baby. I don’t think that’s quite accurate: She remains hesitant around new people, but when around us she’s just our happy little Avery. I can’t help but adore her.

-M

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2010 at 9:34 am and is filed under 51.Two kids-October 10. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.