18 months. One and a half.

Again, quite a few days late, but better late than never. :) This seems like such a big milestone to me... One and a half.  Like, almost a bigger deal than turning one, but without the party to go along with it.  And once again, SO much has happened this past month.  I have a feeling I will continue to say that for quite a while!  So here we go:

New words:  Holy cow, it's getting hard to keep up with her new words.  Just some of the new ones on the list are "frog, fire, puppy, knee, oh tooo! ("oh toodles" from mickey mouse clubhouse), read, phone, belly button, two, four, ice cream, apple pie, juice, spoon, fork, knife, bowl, cup, pants, move."  And there are a lot more.
Letters:  When we ask "what letter is this?" she knows A-I, M, O, P, Q, T, V, W, and Z.  She can say many of the letters and their sounds except for a few (like for H she says A, so she's close at least).
Numbers: She can pick out 1, 2, and 4, and knows when she is holding two objects, and says "two!" appropriately.  And she can count to 5 on her own.
Colors:  She knows red, blue, and green.
Shapes: She knows circle, triangle, rectangle, diamond, and star.

This month she decided she only wants to sleep in a big girl bed, which has been an interesting transition.  She started refusing to sleep in her crib one day- crying and yelling "bed! bed!", PLUS she can climb out of her crib, so we decided to go ahead and make the change to a big girl bed.  I'll do a separate post on this soon, but so far she falls asleep in a bed, and usually wakes up at some point in the night and comes in our bed.  Last night was our first night of making sure she stayed in her own bed all night long, and it went fairly well, so I'll share a little more on this later...

She has become even more of a mama's girl, and wants me to be in her sight, if not right next to her, all the time.  If I leave the room, she yells "MAMAMAMAMAMAMA" the whole time until I come back.  She has also become super snuggly, and will out of nowhere come over to me, climb on my lap and lay her head down on my shoulder, or just give a bunch of big old kisses.  And I love it every single time.  She's really into naming things she knows, and will randomly just point things out and name them.  One of her favorite things to do is give you the rundown of body parts, pointing and naming them all including eyebrows, chin, and cheeks.  She also loves to name her utensils (fork, knife, spoon, bowl, plate, etc...) and she likes to point to my drink and say "mama" and then point to her drink and say "Ri-Ri."  Yeah, she knows her name, and if she sees a picture of herself or sees herself in the mirror she says "Ri-Ri!"  She also now points to my belly and says either "baby" or her version of the baby's name.  It's pretty darn cute.

Riley on the run.  The girl just doesn't stop!

This little one is obsessed with her milk, although for some reason, she no longer calls it milk.  She used to say milk, but now she's made up her own word for it, and refers to it as "ng ng"... yeah, weird, I have no idea where that came from.  She also now named her paci her "pay" and her blankie her "gray gray," and has become super attached to all of them.  She is very interested in what everyone else is eating, and will come up and say "taste?" until you give her some to try.  She LOVES cheddar cheese slices, cereal, fruit snacks, bagels with cream cheese, smoothies, spaghetti, and bananas.

She's very into doing things herself right now, which means she insists on using her own fork and spoon, and holding her own big girl cup.  She is NOT happy if you try and help her or sneak your hands onto something to avoid spilling.  She says "hold? hold? hold?" until we give it to her to do herself.  She currently loves stickers, crayons, and painting, which is fun because I enjoy doing art projects with her.  At her 18 month appointment she weighed in at 23 pounds (33%).  I can't remember her height but it was in the 85 percentile I think.  She's in size 4 diapers, size 18-24 month clothes, and mostly size 5 shoes.  Still no more teeth!

I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting, but she keeps learning and doing new things so it's hard to keep up!!  I'm hoping to take her out and do a more formal 18 month photo shoot this weekend, so let's hope she cooperates!  Happy 18 months, my little one!