A reason to celebrate

Today, our girl is 18 months old.  (Okay, actually it was yesterday.  But yesterday I wasn't really in the mood to celebrate, and she deserves FULL celebration!)

It seems incredible to me that it has been a year and a half since we met our sweet little pumpkin.  Each day brings so many discoveries and so much learning, I am just awed by her on a daily basis. 

Some things about our girl at 18 months:

• She is working on stringing sentences together.  She's not quite there yet, so she ends up talking a little like E.T. where the ideas come out without any modifiers. "LeeLee, good girl."  It's adorable.
• To her mother's intense delight, miss Leah loves to read!  She pulls a book off the shelf, comes to me and insists, "Lap!  Read!"
• Her favorite books are "Curious George" and "Are You my Mother?"
• When we read these books, I always pause at random words, and without hesitation she fills them in.  It doesn't matter which words I leave out, she always knows what comes next.
• She is no longer our shy little wall flower.  At the Taste of Colorado last week, she began walking up to random strangers, saying Hi and insisting to sit in their lap. 



No, really.  She wanted to sit on her lap.  And steal her hat.

• She has been known to ask to hold strangers' hands at the zoo, and tells the check out people at the grocery store, "I love you!" when we leave.  Yep, she's definitely coming out of her shell. 
• She repeats everything, and sometimes she hears conversations I wasn't even aware she was paying attention to.
• She knows everything.  Seriously.  Stuff I'm not even aware that she knows, and suddenly she'll pipe in with the right answer.  I'm left standing there with my mouth hanging open. 
• She can count to 9 (although someone always has to get her started.  It's never yet occurred to her to count spontaneously)
• She gets so excited to tell you what she knows that sometimes she forgets to give the right answer.  Especially when it comes to letters. She just runs through all the letters she knows because she's so darned excited to tell you. 
• She is very specific about what she wants to eat, and what she doesn't. 
• She adores Sesame Street, and legitimately learns a lot from the show.  We regularly discuss the various characters on the show: Bert and Ernie, Elmo, the Count, Abby and Cookie Monster. 
• She is a great sleeper and a great napper, sleeping from 7pm-6am and 11:30-1 every day.
• She is definitely beginning to exhibit toddler behaviors, like random fit-throwing and screaming when she doesn't get her way.  She has had a few "time outs," where Mommy goes away from LeeLee for 1 minute.  So far, they work pretty well... we'll see how long that lasts.
• She loves babies, and loves to play with other children.  She can't take her eyes off them when we're out and about.
• I love going places with her, because she keeps up a running narration of what she sees.  "Grass!"  "Dog!"  "Bird."  "Tree."  "Leaf!" 
• She is still a momma's girl.  She loves other people, but nobody quite does it like Mommy.  (I still love it, too!)
• She wears size 3 diapers and size 5 shoes, and still fits into her 12 month clothes.  I have a few 18mo and 2T items, but they're pretty big on her.  Especially pants - she won't be ready for the 18 month pants for a while. 

And just because they change so much in a year, we had to have a little celebration, complete with presents and cake to mark her year and a half. 





Curious George, some new musical instruments and 18-month jammies.  Now we're set!



The copy we have is in an anthology, so it's missing a ton of the pictures.  Plus, this one I can write in.  I can just see her learning to read this book all by herself.  That day is coming...

We love you, monkey, and we are beyond blessed to have you as our daughter!