18 months.

well she's actually 19 months old now, but who's counting?  clearly not me.

her new talents are:  

being able to count up to about 18.  she can almost make it to twenty, but kind of trails off around 18 and then erupts into a cheer when i say TWENTY!  

she speaks in 2 or 3 word sentences, and sometimes whips out even more than that.  more often than not, when i actually listen to what i thought was just baby-babble i can make out clear sentences.  it always catches me by surprise.

loves to sing "i am a child of god" and her "ABC's."  

she's our little mimic and i unfortunately heard her echo my "oh, crap!" a couple of days ago.  so i guess i'll need to watch myself a little more carefully.

can recognize and say the colors red, black, pink and white.  purple, orange, green and blue are a little fuzzy right now but she'll get there.

can recognize and say the shapes heart, circle, star, square, triangle and rectangle.  

when caleb is in school we spend most of our mornings here.  as i clean up the kitchen she pulls random things out of the cupboards and puts them back in, over and over again.

she's completely obsessed with blue's clues.  or as she says it, "cues cues!"  in the morning when i go to get her out of her crib she stands up and says, "hi mama, do you see a cue?"  and then looks around her room and says, "where?" as if she's searching for a pawprint.  we discuss her "handy-dandy notebook" about 50 times a day and whenever she sits down she calls whatever chair she's sitting in her "sinking chair."

 

has lived up to her womanly duty of developing a fascination for shoes and loves to put on anyone's shoes but her own.

she definitely has a strong will, i've known this from the start.  90% of her day she's a dream toddler, walking around content and playing and laughing.  but the 10% where she's asked to do something she doesn't want to do?  WATCH. OUT.  she has been put on a couple of time-outs already and i have a feeling it's the beginning of a long couple of years of time outs.  but i'm prepared...her brother was the same way.   

she absolutely loves the moon.  she looks for it every time we walk outside whether it's daytime or not.   she goes through her vocabulary of "sky, clouds, birds, sunshine, trees and then says....moon?  MOON?  WHEE ARRRRE YOUUUU?"  and then i have to explain that the moon went "night-night" so that the sun could come up.  she has a moon nightlight in her room and it is the only way i can coax her into her bedroom during bedtime without her having to have a showdown.  

so there's her 18/19 month update. 

leah is still our ray of sunshine.  

and i am grateful for every minute that i have had with her.