How Avery is 19 months old seriously BLOWS my mind. I’m in the beginning stages of planning birthday #2 and everyday I’m just like holy cow TIME FLIES.

I know they tell you that about just about anything, but since having a child- it literally feels like time is moving even FASTER. It’s insane to me. I will say, this is my favorite stage so far. Being transparent, I didn’t like the newborn phase, like at all. I was dealing with some mild PPD at the time and those first 3 months just felt like a whole lot of work and not much in return, ya know?

I am LOVING this stage more than any other. Avery is so communicative and her little personality is coming out. She’s very vocal about things she wants, and more importantly, things she does not want LOL. She recognizes things and will laugh or point to new things she wants to get a closer look at. It’s honestly been the most fun! Here are some of the the things we’re up to with her right now!

Favorite Things

+ Playing Dress Up: Avery LOVES hats, like LOVES them and gets so excited every time we give her one to put on. She also LOVES shoes! Just like her mama 🙂 She runs to her shoe bin and will pick out shoes she wants to wear and will even ask us to put them on for her to walk around the house. It’s the cutest. She’ll even pick up our shoes and bring them to us and the cutest part is she knows the difference between mom’s shoes and dad’s and brings them to us accordingly, such a smart little cookie!

+ Movies: We haven’t actually let her watch a movie yet and she doesn’t watch tv aside from watching Family Feud with us while we eat dinner together. BUT we play the Disney movie soundtracks on the TV, which play the movie scene that the song comes from and so far, her favorite is without a doubt Moana.

+ Miss I-N-D-E-P-E-N-D-E-N-T: She’s at the stage where she wants to do everything herself. Luckily, she’s a pro at feeding herself so that’s no longer a hassle. It used to take us forever to feed her and make sure she ate enough just because she wanted to feed herself and would either miss her mouth completely or drop all the food on the way to her mouth. She’s starting to dress herself with some help from us and likes to do things she sees us do on her own- like throw trash away, blow her own nose, etc.

+ Huge Animal Lover: She LOVES animals and will say the sound an animal makes when we see one at the zoo or the aquarium, or just with her animal flash cards we have at home. My favorite is the way she does the elephant sound- I taught her to throw her arm up (like a trunk) and make the ppphhhhhwwww sound with her mouth.

+ Music & Dancing! Ever since she was a baby, she’s always loved music and the dancing started a little later on when she learned to move her body. Right now, she has a few favorite songs that we know will get her grooving every time we play them (it’s usually either Moana or something Andy Grammer). Watching her dance is my favorite thing.

+ Pool Time: Whenever she sees her bathing suit (like when I’m folding laundry) she immediately starts saying “pool” and trys to get her shirt off to put her bathing suit on. She definitely loves the water and splashing around!

+ Books: Right now I feel like she likes flipping the pages more than anything. I literally don’t get halfway through the page before she wants to flip to the next one. But she sure loves picking books off her shelf for me to “read.”

Daily Schedule

Our weekdays look different than our weekends, so I’ll start with the Monday- Friday schedule.

+ Mon-Fri: I get her up at 7:00 am, diaper change, dressed, fed breakfast, and we’re out the door by 7:30ish. Avery goes to school and takes a nap around 11:45am/12:00pm. She’ll usually nap for anywhere from 45 min to an hour at school. Picked up around either 2 pm or 5 pm depending on the day and what my work schedule looks like. Usually we go for a walk when we get home, dinner around 6:30 pm, bath by 7:00 pm and down by 7:30 pm.

+ Weekends : We let Avery sleep in as long as she wants on the weekend and then depending on what we’re doing, if she falls asleep in the car, we’ll let her nap in the car for as long as possible too. We generally don’t follow a real schedule on the weekends because we’re typically busy, but she eats when we eat and we’ll do pouches or crackers/granola bars for a snack in between. For bedtime, it really depends what we’re doing, if we’re home by 6:30 and can stick to the weekday schedule, we do. But if we’re at Disneyland or out and about later than normal, we just give her a quick bath whenever we get home and then it’s straight to bed!

+ Naps: She’s down to 1 nap per day. If we’re home, it usually is around a 2 hour nap. If we’re in the car or she’s napping in a hotel/grandparents house, it’s usually less than 2 hours.

Food

+ Avery eats whatever we eat! So breakfast is usually like oatmeal and bananas or blueberries and strawberries. Lunch is literally anything from burrito bowls to fish, to cheeseburgers, and dinner is about the same; pizza, pasta, etc. We’re pretty lucky that Avery likes just about anything we give her!

It’s been the absolute best time watching her grow. She’s such a smart, funny, gentle little girl and being with her is my favorite thing in the whole world!

Drinks

+ Water & Milk : We’ll give her a sip of Body Armour or Horchata if we’re drinking it. But we don’t do any fruit juices or lemonades or anything like that. She does about 8 ounces of whole milk in the mornings and roughly another 8 ounces at night before bed.

As far as momma goes- 19 months has also been my favorite for me too! I feel like I’ve got a good work/home balance and things are a little more predictable now than before. I’ve made it a point to make sure I give myself more “me” time, whether its a work-out, going to get my nails done, or just sitting down to blog a little bit 🙂

Overall, I’m just soaking it all in and enjoying my little bean as she learns and takes in more and more of the world around her.

Do you have kids? What was your favorite stage? Was there a stage you disliked?