18 Months

Wow. Really? Kaycie is 18 months old today!

Happy half-birthday, baby girl!

I can't even tell you how much she's changed in the past few months. She is loaded with curiosity. In the past two weeks it seems like her vocabulary has doubled and her comprehension of what other people are saying has increased drastically. While we were in Tampa she stayed with my parents. When she got home, after just 4 days, she was doing all kinds of crazy things she hadn't been able to do before! Things like successfully putting together her wooden puzzles. She had gotten fairly good at matching up the pieces to where they went, at least withe the animal puzzles, but had a really hard time getting the pieces to fit. Last week she not only put both of her animal puzzles together without much help, but she correctly matched up and fit 15 of pieces of her alphabet puzzle without much effort! She could have done more of them, but she saw a shinny and moved on after 15. But seriously. She had never made much effort of any kind with the alphabet puzzle. It was just too many pieces and, frankly, not animals. Suddenly it's her favorite.

She's also made a lot of progress on processes. She not only likes to push anything with wheels, but I got her a little plastic shopping cart and she's started filling it up with things and delivering them to places. And she put her baby doll in the top part where she usually rides! She's figured out how to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer and turn both of them on. She'll name the different items of clothing as she puts them in the dryer. "Shirt. Pants." And of course she's infatuated with shoes. This morning she made me take off my sneakers and put on my sandals before we left to run errands!

One thing I've worked pretty hard at lately has been manners. She's learning her "please" and "thank you" and is starting to use it a little more without prompting. And I think she's finally getting the hang of telling me what she wants out of the fridge instead of running to the door and whining until I open it and let her browse for her drink of choice. Now she's started trying to tell me, "Milk, please!" It's adorable. Especially because she knows the sign for "please" and will rub her little chest just as hard as she can.

She loves being outside. She would stay outside 24/7 given the chance. This is going to come back to bite me as the summer gets hot, but hopefully we can keep on getting outside at least once a day! She wants to play in her water table and I bought her a little blow up pool that I haven't given her yet, but I'm sure she'll go nuts over. I also bought a sprinkler, but I'm not sure if it'll be a hit or scare the daylights out of her. You just never know...

Ahhh. My sweet girl is getting smarter by the day. Have I mentioned that I adore her beyond words?