18 Months Old!!

I can't believe that Laurel is a year and a half already! Time has gone by so quickly these last 18 months.

She has gone from this...

To this in just 18 months!

I am enjoying all the new changes that Laurel is going through although she can be a handful at times!

She has begun singing the last word in lines from her favorite songs like I am a Child of God, and Pop goes the Weasel. She loves to do the motions and dance to songs like I'm a Little Teapot, 5 Little Monkeys, 5 Little Ducks (thanks for teaching that one to us Aunt Brandi), The Hokey Pokey, Itsy Bitsy Spider, Once There Was a Snowman, and many more.

Her favorite game right now is Ring Around the Rosy and she will do it forever! Every time we fall down at the end she jumps back up, reaches for mine and Matt's hands, and says "more", "again", or "please". It is so cute, but after about 10 rounds of it you get start to get a little dizzy!

She is also learning some of her numbers, colors, and ABCs and is talking like crazy. The other day I started to make a list of all the words she knows to take to our 18 month check up, but I stopped at about 250! She is learning words so fast it is impossible to keep up with her.

She can do about 30 animal sounds although her lion, tiger, bear, jaguar, etc. all sound kind of the same. Her frog sound is so funny, "lipplet" and we also love her snake sound, "hissssssssss". Haha! She can name almost all her body parts including odd ones like her chin and elbows. She likes to point to our body parts and name them as well. I'm not too crazy about "eye" (she will stab your eye out!) or "boobies" which Matt encourages her to do!

One of the funniest things she likes to do lately is make "nests" or piles of stuff and then sit on them. She will pull all the clothes down from the couch (where they are waiting for me to fold them) and then add her blankets, pillows, baby dolls, toys, etc to the piles. Just beware, she gets really mad if you mess with her piles!

She also LOVES to "color", but you have to be careful because she will color on the walls, herself, one time on the toilet, if you don't watch her. She is getting a lot better about coloring on "paper" because she knows I will take them away otherwise.

Of course she still LOVES to run, jump, and climb every chance she can get. I have to keep a very close eye on so she won't kill herself with her daring deeds. We will be starting gymnastics next month so hopefully that will give her a good outlet for all her excess energy! But probably it will just give her more ideas!!

It is so hard to get anything done nowadays. I have to watch her so closely to keep her safe and because I will be cleaning up one room and she will be in another room wreaking it! She is not happy when I'm doing something besides paying attention to her!

I spend most of my days just playing with her and reading and singing. She is growing up so fast and I'm trying to enjoy every minute!