Venily is 18m old!!!!

(I started writing this yesterday but was SOOOOO exhausted all day that I spent most of the day sleeping. I'm much better today!)

HAPPY 1/2 BIRTHDAY VENILY!!

My baby (soon to be my oldest) is 1 1/2 years old today!!!!! I definitely LOVE the stage she's in right now. She is very independent yet loves and adores her Mommy and Daddy (though especially Daddy, she's definitely a Daddy's girl!).

Here's her 18m stats from her last doctor's appt. She is still wearing mostly 18m tops and 12m and 18m bottoms. Though the 12m are mostly too short and the 18m mostly fall down (You can't win!). She is in size 6 shoes now. Still in Size 3 diapers (I feel like she's been that size forever!), I'm hoping we are in underwear before we ever have to move to 4's!

Things she can do now:

*Go down the stairs while standing and holding onto the railing (the doctor wanted me to have her try this and she is already a pro- though it makes me so nervous, I do NOT like stairs!)

*Working on her colors! She has blue down really well and will tell you everything that is blue all day long, it's definitely her favorite color right now! And if you give her an option of something she wants, she always wants the blue one, lol. She is also getting good at brown, red, and green- sometimes yellow and orange. And she can say the names of all the other colors but sometimes it takes her a couple of tries to get them right! She loves to tell me the colors of all of Easter eggs.

*"Count" up to 3! Lol, but she needs someone to start her off by saying one, then she'll say "TWO.... THREE!" If you ask her how many shoes she has or how many hands she has or something, she will also tell you 2 or if you tell her to go get 1,2, or 3 diapers she will usually get the right amount!

*Shapes- she knows hearts, stars, and circles. And can draw circles when you ask her to. We're working on triangles next! :)

*She is talking like crazy and uses a lot of 2-3 word sentences. She can pretty much say any word but REFUSES to say her own name (I have no idea why, lol!). Some things she says are "car go bye-bye" "too slow" (which she plays with Daddy) "Daddy's here!" (when he comes home from work) "Matt's house" (if we are anywhere NEAR his house or neighborhood) "ba-bye, Kate's house?" (when she wants to go to Kate's) "baby cry" (she gets VERY concerned when she hears babies crying in the store), "all gone milk", "kitty bite rock?" (she likes to try and feed the kitties around our house rocks, lol) "sit down" (when she is standing and isn't supposed to be), and other things like that.

She has started actually being able to tell me stories now too! Yesterday morning when she woke up I was talking to her and I'm like "Aww, look at your poor lip" (she had busted it bad the day before) and she starts pointing at it and saying "fall.... BIG fall!" (while looking so serious) and then she started pretending to spit and saying "red" and I'm like "Yeah, you were spitting out red, huh, in the sink?" and she shakes her head and says "yeah, red".


Some of her FAVORITE things in the world right now are:

*Babies! (I think she's brainwashed, lol!) She ALWAYS wants to bring her baby doll everywhere she goes! She brought her to the dr's, brings her to the stores, always asks for her when she is ready for a nap or wakes up at night, etc. And if she sees a baby on t.v. she HAS to have hers, lol. And she takes REALLY good care of her too, lol. She feeds her snacks and gives her drinks, puts her in her highchair, wraps her up in blankets, changes her diaper, etc.

*slides- she would live at a playground if we let her and always finds them as we drive, go for walks, shop at stores. We're still looking for a little playground to get her

*Gummy worms and chocolate!

*Coloring

*Little People- she gets some crazy involved scenarios going with her little people, it's really funny to just sit and watch her act them all out!

*ALL animals, especially DOGS, cats, birds, fish, elephants, pigs, cows, horses, bunnies, haha, okay it's just easier to say all of them!

*baths!- my little girl who used to cry and scream if I said the word bath, now ASKS me to take a bath and NEVER wants to get out!! The Kalahari did wonders for her!


Bad habits:

*Biting nails (which is DISGUSTING and I yell at her all the time for it! Neither Jason or I bites our nails, so I have no idea how she picked it up!)

*Pulling her hair when she's mad

*saying "NO!" when we ask her to do something, lol. She's really into testing her limits right now. She loves to purposefully do something naughty in front of us to see how we will respond. It's kind of funny, but kind of frustrating too.

*She is also starting to get shy around people she doesn't see a lot now (the dr. said it usually peaks around this time and gets better by 2). It makes me nervous, I hope she's not as shy as I was! If that is truly her personality, I mean that's fine, but I am going to try to do everything in my power to make her as comfortable as I can around other people. Starting this week we are going to be doing Story Time at the library on Tuesday mornings and are going to the 6 week long "Building Blocks" class on Wednesday mornings where they read stories, sing, and dance. I'm hoping it helps! {Update- we went to our 1st story time today and Venily did pretty good. She was really shy at first, but warmed up a bit at the end. I think this will be a REALLY good experience for her!}



Oh, and we've been taking a potty training break. I find the whole process so tiring! She knows what she is supposed to do and how to do it, but likes to see if I'll react when she does something wrong. So I'm going to wait about a month to try again. I've read that you're supposed to leave them completely bottomless for like 3 weeks straight so I am waiting until it is nice out b/c I don't have that much patience to clean up a million accidents on the floor!

I'm hoping to get her professional 18m pics sometime this week or next, I'm not sure where I'm going to be going yet. We also need to get our family pics done preferably before I get huge, lol!