18 Months?!?!?

I've got no idea where the time's gone. How is she 18 months old? It has gone by so so fast.

In the last couple of months, we've seen such huge changes in our girl. She is more of a little kid than ever. Her vocabulary is exploding with a new word every day, sometimes two! Our Hawaii trip was been a wonderful time for Matt and I to spend lots of time with her and I think she enjoyed it as much as we did. All of her most recently acquired words are associated with Hawaii. Shower (which sounds somewhat like shower), gecko (dead-on), sounds for both a chicken and a rooster, fishy (sounds like ISHY!), and I'm sure 10 others that I can't think of right now. She's also stringing a word or two together to address her greetings and farewells, as in “Hi Mama!” And, possibly my favorite thing, is her singing. She sings “Row Row Row Boat” then we fill in the next bit and then she does a sort of mumbly “merrily merrily merrily merrily” and then we finish up for her. She also fills in the E-I-E-I-Os and the animal sounds on Old McDonald. I will have to post a video of it sometime.

In physical development we've reached the stage of running and climbing. To the extent that we'll let her, she walks everywhere on her own and tests her boundaries as much as possible. Sometimes she totally freaks me out with her brazeness, but I remind myself that it's good to let her develop these skills while I'm around to catch and assist.

Her favorite thing to do right now is run around like a crazy baby, especially outdoors. Hawaii honed this passion to a fine point. She also loves mooching food of people, being read stories, “seeeee?”ing whatever it is the adults are doing and screaming if we're being “MEAN!”

She makes me laugh practically everyday. She makes me proud every day. And there's not a second that goes by that I don't feel incredibly blessed to be her mama.