18 months

We can't believe this girl is 18 months old! She is so much fun, as illustrated by the linguine walrus above. Her vocabulary has really taken off this month, and we love hearing her use her voice...most of the time. ;) She did not enjoy her doctor's appointment any more this month than at 15 months, but she's done with shots until she's four, so hopefully she'll start feeling better about it! Now onto the stats, tidbits, and pictures.

STATS
Height: 35" (99%)
Weight: 26 lbs. 7 oz. (88%)
Head: 47.5" (80%)

She peed on the potty for the first time! Don't get too excited. We've still got a lot of progress to make on the potty training front, but this was a nice success to have along the way.

She was loving Despicable Me this month. If you ask her what Vector says, she says, "Oh, yeah!" and does his hip motions. So cute! She loves the minions, which she now calls "mini", which is way better than calling them onion. She spots them everywhere because of the advertising for the new Minions movie; she sees them on banana stickers, balloons at the grocery store, Little Debbie packaging. It's made grocery shopping a lot more exciting for her!

Whenever we ask her to boogie she picks her nose.

She held a potato bug for the first time and let it crawl on her arm. She really enjoyed that experience.

She likes to point out nearly every ant she sees on our walks, which is usually a lot. It takes a long time to get to the swings now.

I'd say her favorite foods right now are grapes and chips, which she calls "papu" or "pergles" (Pringles). She also discovered a love for honey this month; honey toast is a new breakfast hit.

We were really proud of her for sleeping with her baby doll instead of her bunny one night this month without any upset. She peed on bunny during her nap, so we had to wash it and set it out to dry. It wasn't going to be dry by bedtime, so we told her that bunny had to take a bath that night, and she would be sleeping with her baby instead. She asked about her bunny a few times, but she never got upset when we reminded her about the situation. Then she slept all night just fine. We were so worried it wouldn't go over well, but she did great!

She knows a bunch of shapes! She can say when she sees a circle, star, heart, plus, oval, and octagon. And she can point out squares, rectangles, and diamonds.

We're still working on learning colors. Sometimes she gets them right and sometimes she doesn't. I'm not sure we've made it past just guessing, but she is aware of colors and can say or sign all the basic colors.

She has been learning new words like crazy this month! Her vocabulary has really taken off. I don't think I could even count the number of words she can say now. She also improved her pronunciation of quite a few words this month, particularly grandma. Her pronunciation used to be indiscernible to outsiders and sounded like pkkk, but now she's saying, "Gamma."

We took Natalie camping for the first time this month. We were really worried about her sleeping well with us and about what to do with her for so long out in the woods, but it went really well! It's funny because I think we were both picturing Rockies style camping, up in the mountains, even though we've been camping in this area and know that it is more like pitching a tent at the park. It's always a little disappointing for us to roll up to our campsite and realize that it's a big field of mowed grass, but I think that was actually nicer for camping with a toddler. There were much fewer tripping hazards (e.g., sticks, pine cones, stumps), we didn't have to worry about her getting into poison ivy or poison oak, and there were vending machines by the (flushing!) toilets, which Natalie was endlessly entertained by...looking at the goodies, checking the doors for goodies and change, etc. Anyway, she wouldn't nap in the tent, but she did play quietly in there for an hour. She went right to sleep at night. I think it helped that she missed her nap, went to bed a little late, and was exhausted from running around so much. She slept great. Jake and I? Not so much. I woke up at one point with her foot on my face. Another time she was sleeping horizontally between us in our tiny, two-man tent. Oh, and did I mention that it rained for about seven hours the day we arrived? Luckily it stopped before we went to bed.

We saved up our date money so we could go to Zingerman's for lunch. Natalie ate so much fruit and hardly touched her mac'n'cheese!

This is a fun story: I took Natalie to a park where the playground is primarily for kids who are older than her. So I followed her around among the hordes of children there, and it was really fun to see her interacting with older kids. Natalie wandered into this little barn where I could hear these three girls talking about evading some other girl and kind of hiding from her, so I thought that they probably wouldn't want anything to do with a toddler. I started trying to get her to come out, but to my surprise the girls said she could stay and started chatting with her. Then Natalie dropped one of the maple seed pods she had collected earlier, and she started saying, "Uh-oh." One of the girls said, "Oh, don't worry. It's okay. I know where to get more." She went out and found a bunch of seed pods and brought them back in to Natalie. They were really sweet with her, and I could tell she was having a great time with the big girls.

Always have to include a monkey picture.

Natalie loves the Tsum Tsum toys (and videos), especially Winnie the Pooh. We're lucky we didn't have to take these home with us!

We went to a fun show at the Ann Arbor Summer Festival this year. The group was called Cirque Mechanics. They had a guy riding a unicycle while lifting a lady above his head, a guy standing on stacks on planks and barrels, and a lady doing acrobatics in a suspended hoop. Natalie really enjoyed herself, and I think other people enjoyed watching her dance to the music and have a good time. We certainly did!

At Ben & Jerry's for a little ice cream before the show.

You can see a lot of the performers in this picture of the finale. It was a fun show!

Natalie loves this crab puppet at the library, and she likes sitting at the puzzle table.

Another silly story: One day I couldn't find my bottle of moisturizer, and I knew I had given it to Natalie to play with for a few minutes the day before, so it had to be upstairs somewhere. I searched and searched with no luck. Our apartment is not very big, so it was hard for me to believe that it could be lost. Then I noticed that one of my lip balms was missing as well, and Natalie often plays with those because the containers look like balls. I enlisted Jake's help, but he couldn't find them either. I also asked Natalie where they were, since she usually remembers where she puts things. Finally, Jake suggested that we give her one of my other lip balms to see what she would do with it. I was doubtful that this would work, but less than a minute after he gave one to her, we noticed she didn't have it anymore. Jake had seen her by the corner of our bed, so we started inspecting closer and found two lip balms, the moisturizer, and a couple of other items tucked inside the top sheet at the foot of our bed. Apparently that's her little squirrel away place. I never would have looked there. I wouldn't have found them until I washed the sheets. Silly girl.

Natalie got to try out a bounce house at a friend's birthday party. She had a lot of fun!

Bedtime stories!

She has started pulling funny faces when I ask her to smile.

I took Natalie to the park, and she found this plastic potato toy. I thought it was such a blah toy, but she carried it around with her until we left. Haha!

Natalie kept walking away with the rope while Jake was working with the other end to tie up a tarp. I asked if she was being a helper, and she called the rope helper for a couple of hours before she figured it out. Haha!

Our camping neighbors. It was close quarters in there.

Playing dominoes under the tarp while it rained. 

Good morning! Natalie still asks me about the tent sometimes.

We found a knotty tree.

Our little girl is all grown up and starting nursery! We'll see how that goes. Jake has brought her in to see me a fair amount, and she doesn't really cling to us at all, although she does get mad if I have to take a kid out to their parent. I'm not sure what to expect, except that I will be sad whether she misses me or doesn't. It will be a good opportunity for her to have some time away from mommy, though, and to interact with other kids. We're excited for her!