18 Months

Dear Lily,
18 months?! Where did the time go! How are you already a year and a half? Sometimes I feel like it was just yesterday you were still in my belly and we were begging you to make your entrance. Then there are other days, like yesterday, where you show off all you've learned in life so far! You've come so far in this past month, it's amazing! So many new things!

First off, if I thought your vocabulary had exploded last month, I was surely mistaken, because this month you must have doubled the words you know and say! Last night Daddy and I were testing you to see what you knew, and you surprised us with a few new ones that we had no idea you knew how to say, or identify. You said shirt, back and cheek all for the first time while we were identifying body parts with you ( a game we play all the time now! You love pointing out eyes, nose, mouth, and toes!) That's 3 new words in one day!!! We've been seeing you learn 2-3 new words a day this past week! I started writing them all down the other day so I would remember, I got to around 70 words already! I'll list them all in another post so we'll have that as a record for you. After this though, I think you are learning new words so quickly that I have to stop keeping track of it now!

You abandoned "Itsy Bity Spider" this month as you favorite rhyme, and replaced it with "This Little Piggy". You LOVE when we do this finger play game with you! You will come up to either Mommy or Daddy, hold up you foot to us and say"piggy?"! Then after we finish the rhyme, you hold up your other foot for us to say the rhyme with! You will sit there and have us do the rhyme 6 times in a row, and get very frustrated and mad if we stop!! You still love "Itsy Bitsy", but you definitely have a new favorite game!

Not everything this month has been perfect though. You did go through a period of time where you were on a food strike, and wouldn't eat anything Mommy made you. There were a few days in a row where you would refuse to eat anything but cheese and raisins (always with close supervision of course!) You wouldn't even eat old favorites like macaroni and cheese or chicken nuggets! Then there was also the week long milk strike. Luckily these strikes didn't over lap, and you are eating and drinking like normal again! I was pleased to see you eat a whole plate full of peas last night (identifying each one as you went of course. "Pea! Pea!! Pea!!!")

You were so cute yesterday morning! After Little Gym we took you to the book store for story time, where they read one of the "When you Give a Mouse a Cookie" books. After the story mouse from the story came out to visit with everyone (for the adults reading, they had a costumed character come out to meet the kids) and the second you saw him, your eyes lit up! You got up and pushed your way through all the older kids to get to him, and once there you gave him a big high five! You followed him around the whole story while he was visiting with kids, and gave him 2 giant hugs! We weren't sure why you loved him so much, maybe it was the giant cookie in his hands, or maybe you thought he looked very friendly, but either way, we couldn't get you away from him! You cried when he had to leave! I wish we had brought the camera with us, you were so cute! Maybe they will have someone visiting story time next week too!

Another new game we've started playing this month is sitting face to face making funny faces at each other. I go through all the emotions with you, happy, sad, angry, and surprised. You think angry face is so funny, and love to make that face back to us. You put on your angriest face, hold it for a few seconds, then start laughing! It's so fun to play this game with you, we just sit and laugh the whole time together!

Another new thing this month, which we LOVE, is you've really taken an interest in books! You could sit for hours with us just reading! Once we finish one book, you jump up to grab us another book to start! "Goodnight Goon" (Parody version of "Goodnight Moon") is your favorite! You could read that book over and over! You also love books where you can identify objects. You even have started sitting by yourself with a book "reading" to yourself out loud! And as I'm typing this, I can hear you running around down stairs with daddy saying "Book, Book, Book!" We are so happy that you love to read!

Your interest in baby dolls have continued this month. You love to carry them around, give them hugs and kisses, and put them to bed. Your new obsession with the dolls is undressing and then redressing them! You also like to try putting on their shoes on your feet! You get SO angery when your foot doesn't fit in the tiny shoes!

We are so proud of how much you've learned this month. I know I'm probably looking through my Mommy goggles here, but we really think you are a wonderful and a very talented and intelligent kid! Everyday you surprise me with something you say or do! Just today you surprised us with saying snow when we were out playing in it! I can't wait to see what new things you do next month! We love you baby girl!

Love,
Mommy

Here are some pictures from the whole month. I know I've been bad about keeping up with the blog this month. The computer is now in a room I don't go in often, so I've been seriously behind on putting pictures on the computer and editing them! Here is a set of pictures I took for Valentines day this year:


Lily helping me Shovel on a warm day:


She tasted the ice and made this "yuck" face. I tried to tell her it would be yucky!

Playing with her viking hat and little gym medal yesterday:

She loves putting on hats now:



Outside today enjoying the snow:

Unfortunately because of the snow I wasn't able to do our 18 month photo shoot today because it was overcast. Will hopefully be back tomorrow with that, depending on the weather!