Eighteen/Nineteen Months

Oh my, say it ain’t so! Our baby has passed the year and a half mark and is headed towards two! At times I can’t believe that is possible but then she reminds us that two is closer than we think. :-) Here are a few things that I want to remember about the past few months. There aren’t any pictures so please feel free to skip this post. The little lady is keeping us on our toes and we are enjoying her so much!

- NO - She has known this word for a really long time but only in the last month or so has she started saying it. No was not one of her first words which seems interesting because she hears it pretty often. It is still surprising when she tells us no and it is great that we are able to have more conversations with her and she can tell us what is on her mind (although her facial expressions have always told us plenty about what was on her mind).

- Hygiene - The girl has amazing hygiene. Her two favorite things to do are take a bath and brush her teeth. She would take ten baths a day and brush at least that often if we would let her. You know it gets bad when you have to tell you child that they can’t brush their teeth again. Side note for Mary Beth, you lose a few cleanliness points when you drink your own bath water and leave your tooth brush inside your little potty. I’m just saying, you may want to take a look at those two things.

- OCD - She has a little bit of Dan’s OCD from when he was a kid. I gave her some M&Ms the other day and she had to turn them all over to where the M was on top before she would eat them. Dan used to sort his M&Ms by color and then eat them in a specific order. Fortunately, Dan has loosened up a bit and can eat them in random order now so may MB has a chance!

- Babies, babies, babies - She is all about being a mama. She likes to give her babies bottles, rock them in her mini recliner and she gives them hugs and kisses. It is very sweet.

- Funny sense of humor - The girl is pretty funny. Just recently she took the ring of her toilet seat cover, put it in front of her face and started running around the house making faces through the toilet seat. She was cracking up and could hardly walk from laughing so much. We were sitting on the couch with her the other day and Dan asked her for a kiss. She gave him a sly grin and turned around and gave me a kiss instead and start cackling. It is funny to watch her try to make us laugh and she ends up getting so tickled we can’t help but laugh too.

- CK - MB’s pronunciation of words is still pretty muddled but she totally has the CK sound nailed. She says the words cheek, chick, neck, back, etc. really well and you can understand those words very clearly. Her vocabulary is growing every day and we are constantly amazed at the words that she can say.

- OoooWeeee - I must say that word a lot because MB has picked up on it and says it all the time now. She also says Whoa a lot and just recently said it when I jumped a curb while we were driving through a parking lot. I can’t catch a break!

- Hi/Bye - These are probably my two favorite words that the little lady says. She sounds kind of like a high school Valley Girl when she says them and it cracks me up. I’m sure her southern accent will come through but for now she sounds really grown up when she says these two words.

- Eating out - It has become a nightmare to eat out with the girl. She will not stay in her high chair and eat anything. She cries and struggles to get down and then tries to run around. Our last episode was on December 29^th at Mellow Mushroom. She kept trying to run in the kitchen and ran laps around the table. We had a few heart to heart talks in the bathroom before Dan had enough and took her home before we were finished. We have sworn off of eating in a restaurant until 2021 and so far we have kept to that goal. It is hard to keep a child that cares nothing about eating to sit still so we are waiting for this phase to pass. Please Lord let it be a phase.

- All Girl - The little lady is super prissy. She likes to put on hats, wear jewelry and carry around a purse. The first thing she does when she is in a new outfit or wearing jewelry is go to the floor length mirror in our bedroom or to the oven door to check out her reflection. She grins and gives herself kisses. I hope this high self-esteem lasts through her teenage years.

- Eating Habits - If you have a child that enjoys eating, be so very thankful. You have no idea how stressful it is to try to get a kid to eat when they have absolutely no interest! We are still seeing a specialist and MB is drinking at least two Pediasures a day. We look forward to the day we can just do whole milk and not stress about each calorie. We literally get excited if she eats a few bites at each meal. We try to get her to eat fattening things (who wouldn’t want powdered doughnuts for breakfast?) but her favorite things right now and our go to foods are grapes, blueberries and cheese.

- Dip - MB has discovered the joy of dipping. We try to serve a condiment with most of her meals to encourage eating but she normally uses the chip or chicken nugget to lick the ketchup or ranch dressing up. She has resorted to bypassing the food and just dipping her fingers and giving those a lick. Nice.

- Compassionate - She has such a big heart. She still gets very concerned when other babies are crying or are hurt. Another example is I bit the side of my mouth while we were eating tonight and grimaced in pain. It took us five minutes of telling her that I was okay for her to believe us. She was so concerned and wanted me to be okay. It’s very sweet.

- Prayer Warrior - MB likes to hold hands and say the blessing but you can forget about trying to get her to close her eyes. She recently prayed over our meal about ten times in a row. She kept grabbing our hands, bowing her head and mumbling something and then she would say NayNen. It was so cute and thrilled us to death.

- Driving in the Cozy Coupe - She has been sporting around in the Cozy Coupe these days like a little Driving Mrs. Daisy. She wouldn’t even think of using her feet to move the car and enjoys being pushed around the house. One of the paths that we take is by the floor length mirror in our bedroom. We have to slow down so she has long enough to flash a big smile and say Hi or Bye to herself, what a character.

- Sliding - We have been keeping the mammoth slide inside our living room since the weather has been so nasty. This has made for a lot of fun but she seems to be regressing a little. She used to fly down by herself without any help but now she wants us to catch her at the bottom or hold her hand the whole way down. I have no idea why she has become a little less daring, although, it may not be a bad thing.

- Dada- She is such a huge fan of her dada. The snow days enforced this even more. Dan was home for three days and since I work from home and snow days do not exist for me, he kept her while I worked. The first day that he went back to work, she went through every room in our house calling his name in her sweet voice. It broke my heart. I found her at the door that goes to our garage with her arms up calling his name. She knows that if he isn’t in the house, he often is working in his workshop in the garage. She also associates anyone coming through a door with Dan too which is always funny. She thought our pediatrician coming in the door was going to be Dan, what a disappointment.

- Friendly - The girl really likes strangers and entertains herself in public by waving to random folks and telling them hi. She was serenaded for the first time by an older man at Target the other day. A little boy who looked like he was around three saw her and started singing Ooo Baby, Baby, B-B-B-Baby over and over. She was mesmerized and didn’t know what to think.

- Body parts - She can name all of her body parts instead of just pointing to them and her favorite ones to say and point out are eyebrows, neck and elbow.

- Obsessed - Since she has been sick with an ear infection, she has become OBSESSED with her Nah Nah (pacifer) and blanket. She used to only use it in the bed and car but she has been wanting it all the time. She seriously has a one track mind and she cannot think about anything else. Meow the cat is pretty high on the list of things she wants when she isn’t feeling well but the Nah Nah is by far at the top.

- Stats - In true Mary Beth style, she can sense when she has a weigh in coming up. Maybe she is watching too much of the Biggest Loser or something. The night before we went to the pediatrician for her check up, she didn’t eat anything. Not even one bite and right before we left for the appointment, she had a big blow out. Typical. But, despite her efforts, she weighed in at a whopping 20 pounds and 2 ounces. I was so proud! We are back on the chart in the 3^rd percentile and we are going to move her car seat to face forward. That will be a huge moment in our family! Her height is 32.5 inches which is in the 75^th percentile so no problems there. She is wearing 12 month clothes but they are short in the arms and pants. We have a few 12-18 month clothes that she is wearing but we have to safety pin the pants to keep them on.

- Sleep - She is holding strong at sleeping 12-13 hours at night and takes a 2-3 hour nap in the early afternoon.

- Manners - For some reason, some of MB’s favorite words are “thank you”. Although it sounds like “Teet doo”, we know it’s thank you and she says it almost every time we hand her something or do something for her. Maybe she loves it because it sounds like “peek-a-boo” which is one of her favorite games. I hope she keeps saying it as she grows up. Those words can get you a long way in life.

- Pictures - Last but not least, she loves pictures of family. At least once a day she’ll grab a picture frame of family or friends and start naming them. She knows all of her grandparents and great-grandmothers and can point them out and say their names.