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I know I said I wasn’t going to plan on doing a ton more of these, and they are very few and far between now. But, truthfully, I do enjoy writing about Camryn’s updates – mainly for myself, but also for those of you who are interested, or have a little one the same age or younger.

Hopefully, some of these thing are helpful to you!

this Post!

Camryn’s Current Personality

I say this every time but this is my favorite stage, by far. Camryn is truly a little human and she can communicate so well. She understands so much of what we are saying, and her vocabulary has improved so much over the past few months.

She knows well over 50 words, and each week she is learning so many new ones!

Her newest words are:

• ostrich (random but we have an ostrich beany baby)
• tuna
• “up and down” (she says these together, we usually play the up and down game)
• backpack

She loves bringing me my things or daddy’s things. Or, she’ll put on my shoes. She has so much fun wearing my shoes and slippers. We’re working on teaching her right and left, and I think randomly, she does a great job putting them on the right feet.

It melts my heart when she reaches up for my hand or daddy’s hand to walk somewhere. I hope she’ll do this forever.

She 100% got the funny gene from dad. She loves making us laugh and she’s very good at it. She loves to giggle herself, which gets me laughing.

But she loves doing no hands or finding something I don’t approve of and doing it to laugh.

She can understand “smiling” now. So when we take pictures I either ask her to smile, show her teeth or make a funny face. Here’s an example of “make a funny face” with Auntie.

Camryn’s Likes and Dislikes

Likes:

• Making animal sounds
• Baby Shark
• face timing (only for the first minute then she gets bored)
• Elmo
• Eskimo kisses
• Mommy “no” (she’ll tell me no all day long)
• going up the stairs by herself
• slides and playgrounds
• giving Tater hugs and kisses (she calls her “T T”)
• her friends at school
• beany babies
• cleaning and vacuuming
• helping mom in the kitchen. If we’re near the stove, she says “hot” and then still goes to touch it lol (We’re working on staying away from “hot” things)

• bike (we got her one similar to this)
• helping mommy make muffins (we’ve made so many from these baby led weaning muffins)
• picking raspberries

As I write this list, I realize there’s not a ton of things that she doesn’t really like. It’s mainly her car seat and car rides, but this has been since the start. 

How do we get through car rides?

We usually sing songs, name animals, or go through the different family members and name them all. She enjoys these things. I won’t lie – some car rides can be tough because she doesn’t like to be confined, but that’s what we do!

Eating Habits

Camryn is a pretty good eater. As I talked about in the 16 month update, having her in daycare and eating with the other kids has made a huge difference. 

Her favorite foods are frozen blueberries, frozen peas (yes, she eats them frozen and really enjoys them!), cheese, raspberries, strawberries, apples (I cut them in thin slices to sere her), peanut butter, eggs, crackers, cereal (she calls all cereal “puffs”).

She’ll eat anything, especially when we go out. She loves pizza, just like mom and dad 🙂

We pretty much got rid of the straw cups and have been using the 360 pretty exclusively.

I think it took Camryn a little bit of time to get used to how to use it (because she really did like straws) but now this is what she always asks for. 

I really want to buy a small table for her to sit at, like she does at daycare. She’s 50/50 about her highchair these days. 

Nursing

We are still nursing! Just in the morning and when she gets home school, and before bed. I enjoy it and to be honest, I’m glad she is still interested.

It was difficult to manage sometimes when planning my longer early morning runs for marathon training (I hate pumping) and when I was traveling without her but I made it work. 

I know it’s more of a comfort thing because I’m not producing a ton of milk, and she is eating so much food now that she doesn’t need as much milk. But, like I’ve shared before, I plan to continue as long as she wants to. 

 

Other

Camryn has like 15 teeth – it seems that they all came in around the time we were switching from 2 naps to 1, so I didn’t know if the night wakings were due to molars or sleep deprivation or what. I’m so glad to be on the other side of that.

I know some people have no trouble with decreasing naps or teething, but we had it rough for a couple of months. It was in the beginning of my marathon training, too, so I was not a nice person to be around.

But, I will say that overall, we have a very happy child and for that, I am unbelievably grateful. She is my shining star, and has taught me more grace and patience than anything else in my life. She rarely has a bad day. Even at daycare, they say, “Camryn never has a bad day.”

She’s the person I always want in my life – happy, encouraging and playful. I hope that sense of her continues to grow!

Extracurricular Activities

We don’t currently have her signed up for any extracurricular activities, mostly because she’s too young currently. We were doing swim lessons when we lived in North Carolina and I do want to pick those up.

I’m really interested in doing ISL survival swim lessons, because drowning truly terrifies me and Ed and I do like to swim and do water activities. 

When she turns 2 in April, there is a soccer league I can sign her up for that I am THRILLED about. I have no idea what to expect with two year olds trying to “play” soccer but it will be pretty comical. I actually want to use it to meet other parents (we still don’t have many friends here in our new town), and just have Camryn run around and start to figure out what activities she likes best.

Ed and I are totally open to introducing her to several activities and letting her choose what she is most interested in. 

Right now, she prefers to chase the ball around with her #1 fan, Tater. Tater did just get her cast off so we’re on to a slow recovery!

My Must Have Kid and Mom Products

I know I used to wonder about toys for 18 month old girls, but Camryn isn’t super into toys. She likes practical things, lol. So, here are some things both myself and she love. 

I love these personalized backpacks. They are a little too small for our daycare things, but it’s perfect for traveling like bringing small things on airplanes (crayons, stickers, books, snacks), and for car rides. 

I couldn’t live without my kitchen helper. This makes allowing Camryn to help and learn in the kitchen a breeze!

I LOVE our Bentgo boxes for lunches. They are great at mentally allowing me to pack fruits/veggies, protein, dairy, etc and visually seeing them all.

I also still really love our noisemaker/white noise machine. This has helped with rainy nights and thunder, new construction sounds, and birds chirping early in the warmer months. 

I did buy her these puzzles a while ago and she is just now starting to get into them. She does pretty well matching them.

She does love this easel I just got here. One side is for magnets and the other side is a chalkboard. 

She also just enjoys plain old crayons and construction paper and drawing! Plus, she does that at school, too. 

Past Updates

• 16 months
• 12 months
• 10 months
• 8 months
• 6 months
• day in the life (4.5 months)
• 3 months

You tell me,

What are your favorite toys/products?

Any advice for the next few stages?