by Mommy
Wow! I can�t believe my baby is 18-months-old. Where does the time go? Riley is a little girl now, no longer a baby. She has grown so much; she is definitely her own littler person.
Riley just had her 18-month checkup yesterday. She now goes on the adult scale instead of the baby scale. She is 22 lbs and 31 inches. She�s a little small for her age, wearing 12 months in clothes, though some 6-9 month clothes fit, and still wearing a size 3 in diapers. Daddy calls her his �little itty bitty.�
Riley now has 9 teeth. Her top left-front tooth has come in, which is at her cleft site, and as expected, instead of the tooth pointing down, it points to the side. She also has two molars, one on each side of her upper jaw. Having only 9 teeth does not slow her down with eating. Riley eats anything and everything, except tomatoes. She�s never been a fan of tomato products such as spaghetti sauce. We recently started allowing her to eat potato chips. I was concerned about potato chips because 1) I was afraid she would swallow it and it would get caught since it doesn�t dissolve like a cracker does, and 2) I�m afraid the chip will stab her palate where it�s been repaired and leave a hole, but she always chews her food very well.
Riley loves to draw. It looks like she�s going to be right-handed and she does a great job with her right hand. She is nothing she can�t do with her hands. She can even pickup little tiny objects like a piece of string or a piece of Nerd candy. Of course, when she was born, we had concerns of what she would and wouldn�t be able to do with her hands. Those concerns are definitely gone! She�s just amazing! We�re extremely proud of her.
Riley is old enough now that she has noticed my fingernails. She�ll play with my fingernails and then look at her hands and find fingernails on both of her thumbs and her ring and pinky fingers on her left hand. I say, �See, you�ve got fingernails too!� It still hurts my heart a little when she doesn�t find a nail on her other fingers. And when the day comes when she asks me why her hands are different than mine, I will tell her the truth. I will give her the medical explanation of what happened, and then I will tell her that God thought that she was too special and precious to be made like everyone else and look like everyone else, so He made her a little different.
My sweet baby girl, I love you!