The Hartsell Family

Allison is definitely a mover and not nearly as verbal as Madelyn was at this age. She was pretty sick and got molars right after she turned one. Here are our memories from 12-15 months:

She took her first couple steps at music class on Jan 18th and then abandoned all desires at walking for about a month. She didn't even like walking with toys or our fingers after that.
By February 28th, Allison was walking long distances! We think she just had to get over the horrible month that followed her first birthday.
By March 3, she was climbing up the stairs and sliding back down. And April 1st, she was walking down the stairs facing forwards.
She walked on her knees for a few months too! It was so cute and silly.
She can open up the kitchen cabinet doors all by herself creating quite a mess in a short time! She loves to do this!
Allison loves to eat and frequently helps herself by getting applesauce and crackers out of the cabinet. She can can even open up the box of crackers by herself. We may need to move them higher up now that she has perfected her abilities. She also has gotten berries out of our refrigerator herself on multiple occasions. She’ll then grunt for us to wash them and give them to her.
She loves baths or putting her hands into running water. Unfortunately she doesn't like swimming lessons except for jumping in from a seated position and holding on to safety/the wall.
Allison loves baths so much that if you'd say the word, she'd try to start taking off her clothes even while standing in the kitchen.
She really is a dare devil and scares us while on the stairs as she climbs up using the railing posts. When she gets to the top, she'll just stand and sit on the top step over and over again!
She loves to play both her little play piano one and the real one.
She likes to rub her hand on the railing as we carry her upstairs and bop the top post. I think she likes the smooth feel of the railing.
She loves to feed us food and if we don't want it, she pretty much forces it in our mouth! She also started opening up her mouth for us to spoon fed her for some reason which is funny since we never spoon fed her when she was little.
She is very good at climbing our playset. She also loves to go down the slides. She does not like the swings anymore but hopefully that will change. She cries if we put her in the baby swing.
She now can take off and put back on marker caps which means that now she needs to be watched or else she’ll color all over the place. Luckily they are washable markers.

Verbal

She says all done when she is done nursing and can also say something that sounds like thank you when you hand her food that she's wanting.
She loves when we read her Peek-a-Who and giggles when we say 'boo."
She likes to make noise by blowing her lips together saying "brrr" all the time. We aren't sure who taught her it.
Allison is much more focused on the physical than the verbal but started saying Dada April 5th.
She loves to squeeze my nose so that I’ll say HONK! HONK! It makes us all smile.
She is good about pointing to her blankets or anything else to tell us what she wants.
Allison likes to shake her head NO even when she means yes. She thinks it’s so funny.
Words: Dada, Yes (sounds like ka or ya), hi, bye, this
Signs: More, please, thank you
Although she doesn’t say that many words yet, she knows a lot of words. She knows who Madelyn, mommy, Leia, and Preta are. She also knows what kong, blanket, shoes, food and milk are. You can tell her to go get her shoes and she knows exactly what to do. Our doctor says it’s not uncommon to have the second one be more advanced in mobility than verbally because they have to keep up with someone bigger and have someone to talk for them!

Special Memories

She's WAY better than Madelyn at taking Medicine at this age. I remember how difficult Madelyn was and how we ended up giving her chocolate sauce with her medicine. No issues with Allison!
She loves stools and toothbrushes and we have found her in her bathroom on the stool with toothbrushes in her mouth many times.
She likes to look out Madelyn's closet window.
Allison loves to drive our little play car around the house although she prefers to be pushed around rather than push herself around. Sometimes, she’ll crawl in there and just sit waiting for someone to push her around.
She likes to hold her blanket up to her mouth and suck her thumb. It's so cute.
She likes to carry her own lunch box just like her sister used to do.
For a while, Allison would shrug her shoulders all the time for no apparent reason but it was so cute!
In April, she started getting into feeding Leia and loves to bring us Leia's bowl asking to feed her. She likes dumping the dry food into the bowl and having Leia wait for her to put the bowl on the ground. Leia still waits for us to say "All Done" before eating.
She also likes feeding Leia dog treats so much that we had to hide them because she wanted to do it way too often. She and Leia are buddies!
She really likes to wear shoes and goes to get hers so she can have us put them on. She also likes to wear other peoples shoes as well.
She loves blankets and likes to carry all the blankets she can find or see around. It's quite a funny sight. Her favorite is the cream one her great-aunt Amy got her when she was born.
She is so good with petting both Preta and Leia. She truly is very gentle with them but she also loves running after Preta when she sees him, much to his dismay.
Her favorite foods are eggs, watermelon and berries.
She likes to be "letter helper" when playing with Madelyn. This involves using the pointer to point to letters on our playroom wall.
She runs away from us and gets into trouble often. Sometimes she sneaks into Madelyn’s room to pick out necklaces to wear. She especially likes the large red ball one. We find her in Madelyn’s room often trying to open up the jewelry bin. She also runs into our bathroom and empties out the cabinets in record time!
She is starting to show affection giving kisses to dolls or stuffed animals. She is also good about blowing kisses to people when asked.
She loves picking up hair balls or anything off our carpet and giving it to us. I think she is doing it because she wants us to vacuum although she seems a little sad when I throw them away so maybe they are special to her! She also picks at her blanket so maybe it's a comfort thing.
Allison loves playing at the sink in the water just like her sister used to do. She doesn’t mind getting soaking wet either!
She likes to ride things. She likes her riding toys especially the one that plays music. Sometimes she’ll just push the buttons to make the music play and dance! She also tried to ride Leia but to no avail! There a statue dog at swimming that she also helps herself to riding.
She started throwing tantrums by throwing herself down flinging her head back when she doesn’t get what she wants. She is dramatic and to make matters worse, Madelyn usually then gives Allison whatever she wants!
She has gotten very difficult during diaper changes and buckling her into her carseat. She seems to just like to fight since once she's buckled, she’s fine.
Allison doesn’t like sharing mommy sometimes and when I have both girls on my lap, Allison will try to push Madelyn off so she can have mommy all to herself. It’s hard to not laugh when she does this.

Allison was sick or teething and not sleeping most of February. Poor girl.
Allison had roselola when she was 12.5 months old. For the longest time, we couldn’t figure out why she had a fever and then the red spots appeared.
Allison had ear infections 2/11 and 3/11. We were happy when those stopped and wonder if they were related to her molars coming in.
Teeth: 4 top teeth, 2 bottom teeth, She got her first molar on the top on 2/10/15, second molar on the bottom 3/2/15.
As you can see from her stats, she's a little peanut for height although it's hard to get an accurate reading when they don't want to be on the table to be measured.