18 months!

Yesterday you turned 18 months old. It feels like we were just celebrating your 1st birthday. I took you to get your pictures taken today and I loved the three on here. They just show you perfectly.

Some of the things you are up to these days:

You run everywhere, gone are the days of walking. And when you run, you make this hilarious noise like you are a vehicle moving.

You speak in "sentences". For about the past 2 months, you say "hi car", "bye bye bus", etc. to EVERYTHING you see. You are so verbal, it's really amusing. You know so many words including-truck, bus, pig, giraffe, duck, bird, plane, juice, milk, egg, waffle, dog, cow, more, please, no, yes, up, down, in, out, run, ride, beans, ball, balloon, outside, pool, wet, dirty, mess, water, nice, baby, monsters


All of those words you say really well and pretty clearly. However, we have noticed (thanks Kelly for pointing it out!) that you speak like you are German, despite there being about 2% German in our family. It is so hilarious, I now find myself responding to you by saying achtung or spekense deutch? (please forgive my poor german spelling).

You are also getting great at names-you know Avery, Joe, Nee (Shannon), Baba (Grandpa), Charlie, Bert & Ernie (yep, the ones you are thinking of)

You love to imitate animals and do a hilarious impression of both an elephant and a monkey. Daddy taught you those and they kept Avery laughing all day.

You love Big Bird, sorry Elmo. Elmo is so 2 weeks ago. You wake up and start demanding the birdie. Thankfully we just found a Big Bird DVD.

Food-you love bananas, mandarin oranges, clementines, avocados, black beans, black eyed peas, corn (most days), cheese, eggs, pasta, waffles, gerber graduates pasta pickups, chips, cookies and ice cream (of course he is Joe's child too!). Oh and juice-you are obsessed. I waited until you were about 15 mos before I ever gave it to you and boy do you demand it every second. You don't get it too often, but you do love to scream JUICEEEEEEEE.

Your new favorite book is the Elmo Lift the Flap book pictured in this entry. Baba & Grandma gave it to you when we were in CA and you read it about 5 times a day.

You love to play Ring Around the Rosy, like to play with your fisher price house, you are very much into throwing balls, playing with cars, motorcycles, trucks and helicopters. You love to swing at the park and climb up everything you can find.

Personality: You are what some would call spirited. You have quite a little fire to you. You're very intense and go 100% all of the time. You are very insistent on feeding yourself (which is messy), but I know you've got to get good at it. But when I try to help you get so upset that you start throwing things everywhere, you tend to have quite the temper. You have been trying to teach me patience, which I seem to be a slow learner at, but I'm getting better each day.

You are quite a joy and even though we do have lots of tantrums and time outs, I love this age. It is so fun when you take my hand and lead me places to explore or play. You have such an adorable personality and you are typically happy and laughing (while sprinting through the house).

I think it's official-you are no longer a baby. But you'll always be my baby.