Family of Four: 18 Months Old!

Sweet baby girl, you are 18 months old today! How is that even possible? You are learning knew things everyday and constantly keep your daddy and me laughing. Last night you were quite the comedian, calling Toodles, banging your head on the bed, singing songs, all while making sure we were still watching you! You will often say a whole paragraph of things that we don't understand and the lean back laughing at how funny you are. I know you are really going to keep up laughing when we can understand everything you say!

You still love to read books and can often be found in your room pulling books off of your bookshelf. Mickey Mouse is still your absolute favorite. Anytime you are fussy we can pull out Mickey and you are instantly happy again! You love to call Toodles and will do so at the top of your lungs, but if we ask you to call Toodles you whisper it. You also love to say the magic words to make the clubhouse appear: Meeshka, Mooshka, Mickey Mouse. And you alway swing your arm with it and draw out the "Mickey".

Calling Toodles

You are talking all the time! You seem to talk in complete sentences and paragraphs, but we don't always know what you're saying! Your facial expressions and hand guestures are priceless, you are a very animated talker! If you drop something or fall down you say either "uh oh" or "oh no". If you fall down your daddy and I say "safe" and you know that you are ok to get up. Sometimes when you fall you will lay there and look at us, waiting for us to say it because you don't know if you should cry or not! You have also picked up on our questions and will ask us "What's that?" or "Who's that?". You are still discovering and learning how to control the different levels of noise your voice and will go from whispering to screaming in the same breath. You practice your letter sounds a lot when you're in your car and you almost always whisper them like you don't want me to hear your practicing. You will say "h h h" or "t t t" or another letter sound over and over again.

You recognize and say Mama, Dada, frogs, birds, doggy, Mickey, Minnie, Pete, Elmo, Cadillac, hat, socks, and shoes. You also call Granddad, GranDi (DiDi) Nana, Pop, Sarah and MomAnnette although I'm pretty sure MomAnnette is going to turn into MeMaw. You also say no, juice, hey, and bye. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting too.

You blow lots of kisses, sometimes to people we don't even know! If we ask for sugars you give them to us, although your sugars usually consist of putting your forehead against ours and saying "mwa". Sometimes you will give us real sugars though. Just the other day you gave me my first unsolicited sugars. I was sitting on the floor and you walked up and put your arms around me and gave me big sugars. So sweet!

You still do many of your same "tricks" but have added a few new ones into the mix. You still "do" Touchdown Auburn, arms up, peace, what's up, oh no, and have added in Who's rotten. When we ask you who's rotten you point to yourself and say "me". Sometimes you'll answer Mama or Dada too! Sometimes when someone asks you something you'll hold your hands up, shrug your shoulders and say "I don't know".

You have gotten pretty good at following directions, when you want to. We can tell you to put your toy up or to go get Mickey or to take Dadddy his phone and you will do it.

You can be particular about your toys. You know which toys are supposed to be in which bins and you look for them there. The other day you were looking for your purse and it wasn't in the bin you thought it should be in. You took 2 bins down, took everything out of them until you found your purse and then put everything but your purse back in the bins and put them back up. I can only hope you'll always clean up after yourself like that!

You are still a good eater and will eat just about anything we give you. Nana and Pop say you eat a big lunch, but you don't eat much for dinner. It's not that you are picky, you just don't seem to be very hungry in the evenings.

I'm not sure what your height and weight are and your 18 month check-up isn't until December! You are still wearing size 4 diapers. You can wear and 18 or 24 month in dresses and tops, but if it is a bubble or romper you have to have a 2T to accomadate your long torso! You have 12 teeth now and love to brush them! You still love bathtime until it is time to wash your hair, then you freak out a little!

You are still signing and are picking up on them so much faster now. We hadn't watched your videos very much lately and I put one on the other day. After you watched it you were signing mom, dad, grandma and granddad. You can also sign milk, cracker, more, boat, please, sorry, and thank you.

You are so good about saying "thank you " when someone gives you something. If I hand you your juice cup you almost always say "thank you". I always tell Nana and Pop thank you when we leave in the afternoon and you have picked up telling them thank you then also. We are working on please and sorry now, You sign them both, but don't say them as often.

You can point to your eyes and nose and sometimes your mouth and ears. You will point to Nelli's nose or Daddy's nose too, but we don't ask you where someone elses eyes are because that leads to you poking your finger in their eye! You can also count to four and we are working on five.

You have really started singing lately. Mrs. Bri says you love to sing at school. I don't always know what you are trying to sing and a lot of times I think they are songs you make up, but you sing some kind of song at least once at day.

You went through a phase last month where we couldn't leave you in the church nursery without being paged, but I think that has passed. You will cry when we drop you off, but by the time we get to the welcome center you have almost always stopped. I hate to leave you when you're crying, but I'm glad to know you do miss me a little bit!