Sam at 18 Months

18 months. Wow! Where did the time go? Sam continues to amaze us every day. She may be small but she is mighty! :-) And she continues to be a happy, social and observant child. This is not to say that she is not a challenge at times, and we certainly are having "those moments" where she goes from happy to melt down in 2 seconds flat, but somehow I think you can't have a child without going though some of that!

Sam is an excellent communicator and truly seems to comprehend most of what we say, following through on instructions, or giving us a smirk and doing exactly what we asked her not to do :-), etc. Her list of words is quite long, and now includes: neck, knee, dip (ketchup, hummus, etc), boo boo, no, yes, mama, daddo, nini (my mom), pipi (my dad), grammie (Ryan's mom), bampie (Ryan's grandfather), Gigi, Ronnie, baby, my baby, book, read, run, go, bag, ball, Elmo, rub rub (for hand washing/lotion), up, down, out, nite nite, hi, bye, "oh boy!", "uh oh!", "what's that?", "what is (it)?", pasta, pizza, "me me me" (translation: give it to me!), mine, thank you, and probably some others that I've fogotten. She also knows the sounds for snake (sssss), bee (buzz), penguin (waddle waddle), horse (neigh), owl (hoo hoo), dog (woof woof), cat (meow), lion/tiger (roar), sheep (baa), monkey (oh oh oh), and she flutters her arms for butterfly, claps her arms together for crocodile, and raises her arm like a trunk for an elephant. She can point, when asked, to her feet, leg, knee, belly, bellybutton, neck, arm, hands, hair, mouth, teeth, nose and eyes, and to the same body parts on our bodies. She knows, and still uses, the signs (or really, her own signs) for 'please,' 'more,' 'all done,' 'hat', 'hair brush', 'toothbrush' and 'mittens.'

She loves for me to sing to her. I'm not much of a singer (just ask Ryan), but I have been singing "ABC," "The Wheels on the Bus," "Itsy Bitsy Spider," "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star," "Row Row Row Your Boat" and "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" a lot lately. Mostly when we're in the car. The singing seems to calm Sam too when she's upset, and I'll look back into the kid mirror and see that she is signing "more" when I stop singing, and start up again. She tries to sing along, imitates the spider crawling up the water spout hand gestures, and can now say "A,B" when she's "singing" the "ABC" song in her sing-songy voice, which is just so cute!  She also loves to dance. She'll stand edge of by the TV stand, where we keep the IPod, and do this little up and down "dance" movement with her legs to let us know she'd like some music to dance too. She's white alright :-) and doesn't have much rhythm but I do love to see her bopping to music. Last night in the restaurant, she was grooving in her highchair to the music!

She has been working on putting her own clothes on, trying unsuccessfully to put on her own shirt, socks and shoes, with putting on and wearing her hat being her most successful and therefore most loved technique! She can take at least one pair of shoes off successfully. She puts her arms out for her jacket, and will sit down by the door when it is time to go outside so that we can put on her shoes. Although we still feed her occasionally, she loves to have control of her own bowl and spoon/fork. Of course, a lot of times it means she just plays with her food, but oh well! She can feed herself yogurt quite well, and is working on pasta too, although it's often messy ;-)

Messy girl! And do you see all those teeth?! (4 new ones up top, still just 2 on the bottom)

She can twist the cap on and off her fruit pouches, and loves to play with our water bottles and their tops, trying to figure out how things work. Playing with her blocks and stacking cups takes up a lot of our time, and she's still loving her books and coloring. She's definitely in the stage where she loves to copy what we're doing. She does a lot of "cleaning," rubbing a baby wipe around on the floor, the chairs, etc, since she watches me use wipes to clean up her messes often :-)

We're still working on stairs, but she can go up and down on her little stool holding onto the coffee table all by herself. She loves to walk, walk, walk, and will stop and ask what everything on the ground is. "What is?" "What is?" "What is?" When we hear a bird, she will stop and look up, and make her "Oh!" face. So cute! She loves to share, and to feed us bites of her food. She also loves to try to give her food to Ronnie and Gigi, although sometimes she will catch Ronnie eating her cheerios and trot over to him and say "no no!" :-) Again, adorable!

We don't have her 18 month stats yet, but according to her latest ear check appointment, she has finally eclipsed the 20 pound mark, just barely! Yeah :-)