19 months

Well, another month has crept up on me. This month was crazy busy, Dave being on a work trip, Jon & Gail visiting, and my brother visiting. Georgia is talking up a storm and testing every limit possible.

Weight: 26.4 pounds
Height: 34.5 inches (I think.... I'll have to double-check this later)
Shoe size: She has mostly outgrown the 6's that she has and is wearing 7s now.

Language: Her word development continues to explode! She now tries to say anything you ask her to say. She is very good with names - making names for people she meets and remembering their names at a later time. Some new words this month: sugar, turkey, rock, up, down, boat, stop, go, milk, ice cream. Estimated words: 75

Eating/Sleeping: She is loving fruit! Watermelon, peaches, and raspberries are always a hit with her! Sleeping: She has slept through the night a handful of times this month. The other nights, she is usually up once around 4am. Still not quite sure why.... I usually end up changing her diaper and giving her just a little bit of milk. She will then sleep until 7:30 or later (8:30 this morning!). She does 1-nap a day, for anywhere from 1.5 hours to 3 hours long.

Activity: She is learning to run very fast! Now she bolts the opposite direction when we're on walks. She loves TV (unfortunately...) and will occasionally watch it while I do some cleaning up or showering. Her favorite toys are puzzles, and she loves going to the park. Usually her first words when she wakes up are "walk?" or "Park!". She also knows the directions to the park and will get upset if we go the wrong way or towards the park that doesn't have a playground. She has learned how to climb into her highchair by herself.

Memory: I am amazed at how much she remembers. For example: a little friend of hers used her potty about a month ago, and for about 3 weeks every time she saw the potty she said her friends name as if to remind me that her friend used her potty. She also knows that tomorrow, Gail, Jon, Matt and Kyan are coming to visit. I told her about a week ago and everyday she asks about them. She can also name all four of them if you were to ask her who will come visit us.

Other stuff: We had our first experience with a poopy diaper off in her crib... fun...
Speaking of diapers, she doesn't leave them on anymore. I have to put pants or underpants on over her diaper. She likes trying to up and down our stairs without help.

Weather in London

Honestly, if I could change one thing about this country, it would probably be the weather. Having lived through 2 winters here, I have discovered that I have seasonal depression. And unfortunately, that seasonal depression can hit at any time, because the weather here is rarely "good".

Last year, we had three warm weeks that I remember: one in April, one in June and this photo was from October

Do you think I'm exaggerating? Well, according to this (and I read it in other places, too), London gets 1461 hours of sunlight a year. That would be, on average, 4 hours of sun a day! This is 35% less than Seattle, at 2174. Chicago gets almost double the amount of sun we get, and Los Angeles gets maybe 2.5 times as much as us. Still, you have to understand what London is like to understand how bad it is during the winter. During the winter, our daylight hours are around 8. The sun will "rise" at 8am and sets at 4pm. Many of those days are completely overcast and gloomy. We can go days without seeing the sun at all. The days the sun is out, it is astounding how early it gets dark. Even though the sun sets around 4, because the sun just skims our horizon, it'll start setting closer to 3.

Georgia not looking too happy with being outside in April. We had a long 6-week cold/rain spell. Temperatures in the 40s and rainy. Not fun.

Now one of the reasons that the amount of sunlight is so high is because of the summer. The summer is the exact opposite of the winter. The sun is currently rising around 4:45am (and we still have a month to go until the longest day of the year) and will set around 9 tonight. That is easily 15 hours of sunlight on a day that it is not cloudy. Several days in a row of sunshine and warmth quickly add up to 100 or 200 hours of sunlight. Also, quite often in the spring and fall, we will wake up to gloomy, cloudy skies and around 4 or 5pm the sun will finally come out, giving us 3-4 hours of "sunlight".

Georgia all ready to go out to the grocery store in January

Besides sunlight, our temperatures are nothing to envy. During the winter, the temperatures are from 20s Fahrenheit to maybe low 40s. Some mornings, it will be quite cold, but usually during the day the temperature gets above freezing. Spring will be more in the 40s-50s and summer is usually in the 60s and can get up to 80 on the warmest days. Combine that with high humidity levels (usually around 80 or 90% in the morning and will be more like 40% in the evening), and you have a cold that feels very cold, and a warm that feels very hot and sticky. I know these all sound very temperate, but you have to remember that no one has air conditioning, and traveling on public transportation can be quite hot. On the tube, there are temperatures 100+ during the summer. Windows do not open very far (ours go about 3 inches), so it is difficult to cool off a house on a hot day.

The snowstorm in February

I know there are probably quite a few places that have worse weather - hello?! Arizona, Alaska? But, I would say that living in those places is made much easier given that most people have larger houses and a car. If I had either one of those, living in this climate would be much easier. The need to get out of our house is so strong, that I will take Georgia on usually 2 walks a day - one in the morning and one in the afternoon. You try living in 700sq ft with an 18 month old!