18 Months

Erin discovered that Ella will eat yogurt IF you let her feed it to herself. As you can see, this is quite messy. Shortly after this picture, she smeared a big glob of yogurt into her hair... awesome. I'm not sure how much of the yogurt she's actually eating.

Ella "helping" Mommy vacuum.

Mikki, Vera, and Ella. They joined us for dinner Saturday night. We split a CSA share with them, so we got together to try some dishes made from our veggies. Everything turned out wonderfully. It helps when you have two real chefs in the kitchen.

Vera and Ella played outside pretty much the whole evening. They were covered head to toe with dirt. At one point they had both taken their shoes off and were using them to scoop up dirt and pour it onto themselves.

Needless to say, they were in need of a bath. We haven't given Ella a bath (she always takes showers) in many months because I couldn't get her to stay sitting down and I was paranoid she was going to fall. She's been really good about sitting in the shower, so I've been meaning to try the bath again. Erin ended up needing to give her a bath before her nap one day last week and reported that Ella absolutely loved it. I gave her a bath again the next day and not only was she in heaven, but she was very well behaved and only tried to stand up once. Friday morning, the first thing she said when she woke up was "Bath? Bath?". She still loves her showers, but I see a lot more baths in our future.

We started swim lessons again this week, but unfortunately I forgot the camera. Ella had so much fun! She seemed a little skeptical when we were first getting into the water, but once we were in, she turned into a little fishy. She picked up on everything so quickly. One of the things we worked on was sitting the babies on the side of the pool and making them wait until we said ok to come in. So I would plop her up there and then put my hand in front of her and tell her to wait. After the second time of me doing that, as soon as I would sit her on the side she would put her hand up and say "wait, wait". It was so cute and obviously she got the idea. I can't wait to go again this week and hopefully I'll remember the camera this time.

My big girl! 18 months, I can't believe it. For the most part, I'm really loving this age. She's learning so much every day and it's great being able to communicate with her. I'm surprised all the time by how much she can understand. I can tell her complicated things like "If you throw the phone over the baby gate again Mommy isn't going to get it for you" and she understands and doesn't do it. Some times her desire to do what she wants out weighs her desire to do what I want, but usually she's pretty good. We do have some intense tantrums occasionally and she has gotten pretty possessive of her things, but I think that's pretty normal for her age. One game she likes to play (which drives me insane!!!!) is to ask for something like a banana or eggs, and when I get it she says no. So I'll put it down and she'll ask for it again- repeat ad nauseum. Such a little stinker!