18 Months

Eliza, you are 18 months old!  I know, I can't believe it, either.

You are changing every day, in fact, sometimes I come home after being gone for a few hours and say "you grew while I was gone!".  Your hair has grown longer and your feet are getting bigger (size 7!!), and you are getting very tall - taller than some of your friends who are older than you are, in fact.  We will find out on Thursday how tall you are and how much you weigh.

Your vocabulary is growing rapidly.  You say: mama, dada, nana, pop pop (but you only whisper pop pop!), yes, no, belle (your kitty's name), thank you, off, on, down, up ("uppa"), mole (you like to point out all of mama's moles), omelet, egg,  ball, fish, blueberry, cheese, bee, help, ow, and just this week I think you said "I love you" to me!  We were coming out of Byerly's and you were being goofy and cute and I told you that I loved you and you said it right back and then gave me a hug.  It brought tears to my eyes; you are such a sweet love.

You are becoming more independent, and you are happy to play on your own for a little while each day.  It's so sweet to watch you when you think I'm not watching you.  When I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner, I peek around the corner at you playing pretend with your baby dolls, or playing with your Duplos, or reading a book.  It absolutely melts my heart!  You also want to show your independence by trying to dress yourself.  You can almost do it.  It frustrates you when you have trouble doing something by yourself, but you know to ask for help ("ep!") when you need it.

You have excellent manners!  You say/sign "please" when you want something, and most of the time you say/sign "thank you" - unprompted!  It is sooooo sweet.  It's hard not to give you everything you want when you are so polite about asking ;)  But, that's our job as parents, so sometimes even when you ask nicely, we still have to say no.  Especially when you want to dig something out of the trash.

Speaking of the trash... you are quite the little helper!  You love helping mama and dada by picking things up for us and bringing them places.  You're super handy to have around, heheh.  You know where all of the trash cans are in the house and will throw things away for us.  You seem to enjoy helping out, so we always try to find little jobs for you to do.

You love the outdoors.  Now that it's finally spring, we play outside whenever it is nice out.  You like to go down your little slide in the backyard and just run run run around.  You also know when you want to go back inside and you tell us by walking up to the door and saying "in!".

You are a climber, my dear girl!  You MUST climb on anything and everything you can find.  The couch, the coffee table, chairs, everything!

Eliza, you are so very very intelligent, it is absolutely amazing.  The other day, daddy couldn't find his flashlight and he looked down at you and asked "Eliza have you seen the flashlight?".  You walked right over to your walker/push cart thingy, and there it was!  You grabbed it and brought it to him.  You knew just where it was, and we hadn't seen it in days.

You used the potty for the first time on Saturday!  It was just you and dada (mama was sleeping in!).  You were having some diaper-free time (you looooove to be naked) when he saw two little drops of something on the carpet.  You pointed to them and said "toot!" - apparently this is what you say when you have to pee (?).  So dada said "do you want to go use the potty, Eliza?" and so you both went into the bathroom.  You lifted up the seat of your potty, sat down and peed!  Then you pointed to the toilet paper and so daddy gave you two pieces and you actually wiped.  What a smart girl.  Then, you stood up, shut the lid of the potty, and walked out of the bathroom.  Daddy said it was as though you do that every day, you were so nonchalant about the whole thing!

You play pretend and it is sooooo adorable.  You put your baby dolls to bed, you feed them, and you nurse them.  You also pretended to stir soup this morning with grandma and then slurp it up into your mouth with a big ladle.

You have brought your family so much joy over the past 18 months.  You have a happy, sweet spirit that brightens our days.  You fill our arms and our hearts.  I love you more every day.