Punky - Eighteen Months.

Seems like only yesterday I was writing this post about Punky being 12 months old. Time moves so fast these days that its sometimes hard to remember to stop and take it in, but we all know what Ferris Bueller says so here's me stopping to have a look around. It might be a long one and I understand if you don't want to read it all, this post is more about recording these things for Punky and I to look back on, but I appreciate it if you do get through it all!

These last 6 months since Punky turned one have been so hectic. We've had Christmas, weddings, Easter, funerals and more play dates and vegemite sanwiches than you can poke a stick at. And while it's been hectic its also been so amazing to see Punky go from being a baby to a toddler, right before our very eyes.

After all the birthday present opening a month before, Punky knew exactly what to do on Christmas Day and made short work of unwrapping her presents!

I'm the oldest of 5 kids, with 10 years between myself and the youngest. However you don't notice the way a child develops so quickly until you're living with one every day and you're 100% responsible for them, not just noticing them when you stick your head out of your teenage bubble for a few hours each day.

So proud to have built this tower of blocks all by herself, back in January

Punky started walking just after she turned 11 months so she's been doing it for a while, but its amazing to watch her now, running and dancing. She has so much balance and the simplest things that would have her landing on her arse, or worse, her face, just a few months ago, now barely make her skip a beat, there's a little stumble and its onwards as fast as ever. Nothing stops this kid!

Sick snuggles

Except for being sick. She had her first real sickness about a month ago. When I say 'real' sickness, I mean more than just a bit of a cold but a full-on flu-type thing with high temps and the lethargy that goes with feeling well and truly horrible. She spent an entire weekend doing nothing but sleeping and lying on the lounge (or me) and that is so out of character for her that it was a little scary. Thankfully a course of antibiotics cleared her up after 2 weeks of trying everything else had failed, and she is mostly on the mend. She still has a lingering cough and a perpetual runny nose, but the runny nose is more as a result of her weekly daycare session than anything else! I think of it as the immunity building centre these days!

Along with being a breeding ground of germs, daycare is just so exhasuting you can't possibly sit-up to watch Play School afterwards!

Along with her growing gross motor skills her fine motor skills have also jumped ahead in leaps and bounds. She's taken a keen interest in drawing and its truly astonishing to see her pick up a pen or pencil and hold it correctly, then proceed to draw spirals and circles on the page, not just random scribbles. I think she may have inherited a little of her father's (and other family members) art skills. I really hope she has as I am crap at drawing!

Punky loves the great outdors

Something else she has inherited from her father is her fearlessness. The girl just has none. She is not afraid to give anything a go. She will follow her Dad blindly around the backyard, ooing and ahing at every bug and insect he points out to her, more than happy to pick them up and have them walk all over her for a little while. Until she decides to squash them anyway. She tries to climb everything (although thankfully she hasn't figured out how to climb out of the cot. Yet!) and is not afraid of the tallest slipper-dips or biggest swings.

The girl has no fear when it comes to bugs!

She also loves music, which is frustrating at the moment as our CD player has broken and she is really starting to get annoyed with it. She stands and points at the CD player, wanting me to put on the Wiggles or the Play School CDs we have but I can't and she doesn't understand why. So sometimes I pop on the TV to one of the music channels and we have a little dance and a groove to that instead. She also loves to play her baby 'grand-piano', sometimes so enthusiastically that after 6 months two of the keys no longer work on it!. Thankfully she has a grandmother who has a virtual band in her spare room and she loves nothing more that having a go on Grandma's keyboard at Family Night. She even helps her baby doll to play too!

Punky loves to 'play' her baby grand!

Speaking of the baby doll, its her favourite toy at Grandma's. From the minute we get there to the minute we leave, that baby doll is always close-by and she loves to push her around the house in her Aunty's old toy pram and share her drink bottle with her. When we are at home she often tries to push the baby dolls she has here around on her plastic green chair but gets very frustrated that it doesn't work the same way as the pram does. Dave and I have already decided that we need to get her one for here. When she goes to daycare she carries around her Blankey Bear and Violet doll everywhere, they are her security things. Normally they're reserved for sleeping at home, but her daycare teachers tell me that they rarely leave her hands when she is there and when they do, they are never very far from her.

One of Punky's earliest attempts at creating 'art'. 

Frustration has been another big feature of the last few months, with Punky trying lots of new things and getting very frustrated when they don't work exactly the way she wants them too, first try. Her first way to express that frustration is with a scream, then a vigourous shake of her head, and if that doesn't help her solve the problem then the next port of call is the sprawl-on-the-floor-whinging manouvre. She also employs this when her pointing and whinging fails to communicate to me exactly what it is that she wants. It doesn't help that what she wants is usually something that she's not allowed to have, which makes the tantrums even worse, but I know with a couple more months and a bit more language development some of that frustration will ease.

"What do you mean I have to stop swimming and go home?!"

Her vocabulary has really started to expand, and I must say nothing has given me more of a thrill than when Dave and I went to pick her up from daycare last week and she saw me walk in the room, pointed at me and shouted "Mum!" with the biggest smile she could muster! She does also call herself Mum, which is quite cute, and Dave gets the Mum treatment as well, but it's certainly a progression from calling everyone "Nan". Every day she seems to speak more and more words and she tries very hard to have conversations with me and mimic the words that I use. It's a thrill now but I just know that thrill will wear off once she's got all her words and just won't shut up! She is her mother's daughter after all!

She loves to read. Her favourite books at the moment are What Does Baby Say, Where is the Green Sheep? and Grug

Right at this moment she seems to be going through another stage of development, a Wonder Week maybe, which has led to an increase in whinging, and for the first time, clingyness. It's like the separation anxiety that she hasn't really suffered from yet has raised its head and she doesn't like to see me leaving her and has taken to wanting to be picked up by me a lot more often, or taking me by the hand and just leading me around the house while she does stuff. On the one hand its very sweet, but on the other, like when I'm desperate to get to the toilet, it can be quite irritating!

Total water babe

I'm not quite sure if she has any comprehension when Dave and I talk about the "baby in Mummy's tummy" and her little sister who will be here soon, but she has learnt to be gentle to my tummy and has even given it a kiss once or twice when we've all been sitting on the lounge watching the baby wriggle around in there. I am still anxious about how she will be with her new little sister but I know she will love her and, for the most part be gentle with her. I'm not so sure I'll cop the same treatment when I'm not able to give her 100% of my attention 24 hours a day though!

So much change in such a short period of time!

Despite the struggles and hard days, there are plenty that are awesome to more than make up for it. Seeing her grow and develop each day, watching her developing sense of humour and cheekiness really coming to the fore, hearing her frequent laughter and seeing her imagination burgeoning, I am reminded of how lucky I am and that these days go by too fast and won't last forever. In the space of just over two years this amazing little person has grown from little more than an idea between her parents, and it really is the greatest miracle in the world.