Everything Eliana: 18 Months

 I am actually posting this on August 21!! You're actual 18 month birthday!! I'm so good! :)

Here are some photos that go from 12 months to 18 months! :) Man have you grown a TON!

You have such a little personality! I hear it so often: "She has a strong little personality, doesn't she?" You know they're just being poliet and saying that you're kind of stubborn!! :) You sure are - you really want your way. You've just started throwing fits...so we have to tell you to stop throwing your fit and THEN we have you communicate what you would like! :) It's working pretty good for now.

Look how much smaller you were!

You are in size 4 diapers.
You are wearing size 12-18 month clothing. It makes it very hard to buy clothes for you. Because some 18 month clothing is still a little big when I buy it. So then for fall I don't know if I should buy 18 month or 24 month....but I feel 24 month will be really big!!
You just out grew your size 4 crocks and your size 5 sandals. But I haven't gone to buy you anything new yet - so we're still wearing them! :)

You are still a pretty picky eater. Your favorite foods are Yogurt, bananas, animal crackers, easy mac, pizza, goldfish, pretzels, watermelon, I think that's mostly it. I know it's not much. You do eat some other things as well - but sometimes we have to force you to eat it! You eat tuna noodle...but I wouldn't say it's your favorite! :)

You like to put on your shoes, and your mom's shoes, and your dad's shoes, and everyone at daycare's shoes. Sherry calls you the shoe monster! She has to put everyone's shoes in a pile on the counter or you grab everyone's shoes to put on! Silly girl! :)

You love playing in your car. You LOVE playing with your baby dolls! You hit them on the head, but you don't mean to....you're just patting them like I do - but I pat you on your back. :) You like to wrap your baby up in their blankets and carry them around. You kiss them and hug them adn love them! :)

Here's a picture of your first pony tail! :)

You love to open and close doors! Good thing most our doors don't fully latch! :) Or if they do you have to press hard! Your daddy and grandpa fixed our bathroom door and it latches really good now! :) So now we have to be sure that hte door isn't left open so that you don't lock yourself in there! :)

yay! your first pigtails! :)

You started (you've actually started to outgrow this already) picking up everything off the floor. Like you will run through the living room and see a small piece of paper or something, you'll pick it up and bring it to us! It is quite cute!
You also LOVE to throw things away! Especially your dirty diapers! :) You do a good job of only throwing things away when we tell you to. But you do like to DIG in the trash....which drives me crazy! So many times we have to put the trash can up high!

You are currently saying many words, this list is mostly in the order you started saying these words too!
dada, mama, Bekkah, ka-ka (Jayhawk, while pointing at a jayhawk), ball, yellow, fish, G (Grant), woof-woof, beep-beep......

More words:
Baba (for Auntie M was Tex and Tally were here), Bu-Bu (bubbles - now you say the full word), Wee - when you play, Eat - and you sign it, Hello, Bye-Bye, Hi

More words:
Mimi, meme (for you), MINE, You (we say "I Love" adn you say "YOU" and point), Mommy, Mur-Phy!, A-pple-sauce, Thank you, cheep-cheep, Hot-Hot

You've started to say I and point to your eye, we say Love, and you say YOU and point! :)

Your current schedule is bed around 7:30 up at 5:45!! Do we need to get up at 5:45?? NO! But you do it anyways! You started this about a week before we had to go back to school - you did this last summer too! It's crazy how you just know how to set your own schedule - I hope you're like this always! :) You have shifted your schedule back a little -- really it's because we push you to go to bed later....which in turn puts your wake up at about 6:30! :)

You love your cousin Bekkah and Elijah. You smother Elijah and love to be right ON TOP of him! You also think you need to steal every toy from him! Poor guy! He just started to army crawl, you would watch him inch his way to a toy and as soon as he would get to his toy you would march over there and snatch it from him!! You're such an ornery little girl!

You loved helping Mommy get ready in her new classroon - you would go open my cupboards and pull everything out of them!! EVERYTHING! It would be all over the floor!

You've started this shy thing. When new people are around you'll burrow your head into you mom or your dad and pretend to by shy!

We are cutting you from the pacifier. You use it at night, nap time, and in the car. That's pretty much it. We do pull it out at restaurants! :) :)

We are no Long taking the bottle!! So we decided to break this the week after camp. Man was it rough! It took five days of 2 hours of crying!! I tried to be tough - but it was hard. We would take a bath, then read two books, then sing Jesus Loves You (yes, still you and not me - I've sang it this way to you since you were just a tiny, tiny baby). And then I would lay you down.....and then you would FREAK out and Cry, and Cry, and Cry! We would have you cry it out for a little while. However here is how our nights went:

Night one - after about an hour of crying I picked you up and took you to my bed to cuddle to sleep.

Night two- after about 2 hours of crying, and me walking in to check on you every 30 min or so, I crawled in to your crib.....yes in to your crib. It worked! We snuggled and once you were asleep I crawled out.
Night three - after about 2 1/2 hours of you crying, with me checking on you every so often, I crawled in to your bed AGAIN! However, this time I sat in there and you laid your head on my lap...I refused to lay down - you didn't like that too much - but after me being in your crib for an hour you finally fell asleep. Night 3 was the hardest night!
Night four - You cried for about an hour and a half - but you finally became so exhausted you fell asleep!! Woo hoo!
Night Five - after about a half hour of crying you were asleep!!!

After that it was hit or miss sometimes you'd go straight to sleep - sometimes you'd cry and want me to come in and sing one more time - then you'd go to sleep! Now you're pretty good on going straight to sleep! I'm so proud of you!! And proud of your daddy and I -- because I honestly didn't know if we would make it! Those were FIVE VERY LONG NIGHTS! I almost gave in many times! But we didn't! And five nights later we're all sleeping better.

Sometimes you wake up in the night - usually around 3:00. I just give you your paci and you go back to sleep!

I love this photo! You sure have grown a TON!

I love you sweet baby! You're just growing up too fast!! I look foward to the next 6 months as well!!!

I LOVE YOU!
Mommy