The Turner Home: Melanie

Height: 32 inches

Weight: 27 lb

Hair: Blonde

Eyes: Blue

Food: I am constantly pushing the envelope with her and seeing what she can do (much do my husband's displeasure). But she can handle some serious foods. I give her whole grapes, tomatoes, etc and she takes care of them. I also have given her nuts since she has some grinding teeth now. She also eats yogurt by herself now. That frees me up to get breakfast together without stopping every minute to get her a spoonful. She hasn't mastered it yet (see below) but I don't mind the clean up.

Sleep: Sleeping through the night and one nap a day at 1pm.

Temperament: Melanie is starting to find her voice. She will protest when she doesn't get her way or when Reed stops her from doing what she wants. She is so easy going most of the time that I'm not surprised it has taken her so long to start giving us "attitude."

Melanie loves:
-Feeding herself with utensils: Oh it's a total mess, but she loves it and I know she's learning.

-Playing "Peek"

-Frowning

-Books

-TV

-iPad/phones

Mel dislikes:
-When she can't get onto the couch by herself
-When Reed takes a toy away from her
-When she doesn't get to do what Reed is doing (A.K.A. go outside)

New adventures:

-11 teeth! We had a surge of teeth this month. All 4 came within days of each other.

-Giving kisses and blowing kisses

-Time away from brother: Reed spent a week with his Nana and Grampa, so Melanie had us all to herself.

She got a cookie all to herself at the store.
Didn't have to share with brother!

-Signing: We are experts at 'please', 'more', and 'all done'. She recently added 'eat' and 'milk' to her vocabulary. She often tells us she is hungry or thirsty with these signs.

-First Friends: Our Bible study group had dinner at our house that week and Melanie couldn't stop hugging this sweet girl. It was so cute and her sweet friend LOVED all the hugs.

-Playing outside: Melanie still loves playing outside and get extremely upset when brother gets to go out with Daddy and she doesn't.

-Separation sadness: I don't want to call it anxiety, because she calms quickly, but she gets sad when we leave her in the church nursery or when one of us leaves to go somewhere.

-Play-Doh! This lasted a total of 7 minutes because she kept trying to eat it. It was totally my fault, though. I put her in her food chair to play with it. Of course she was confused about not eating it!

-Still in size 4 diapers and 24 Month clothes

-Current vocabulary:
"Ma-Ma"
"Da-Da"
"Ba-Ba" (bye-bye or Bubba for Reed)
"Na-Na"
"Haaaaah" (hi)
"Rah rah rah" (rock-rock)
"Muh muh" (milk)

Another fun fact: At this age, Reed was a big brother!! WOW! Is that for real?! HOW did we survive?!