18 months!

an 18 month old!

It's half birthday time again in our house! I feel like yesterday I was ordering those fondant flowers for Mathilda's birthday cupcakes from Etsy, and here we are, 6 months later!

I've been hinting at it for awhile, but I think now it is true- she is not a baby. She is a toddler. And to drive that point home, the word "mine" has come into her rotation in the last week.  Oh my...

outtake

Vital stats: 32.75" tall (80%), 25.5 lbs (60%). Our tall bear! Her bulky cloth diapers help keep her long pants up.

Bringing a chair into the kitchen to "help" cook.

While she may look more like Reggie, in many ways she is my "mini me". She is very talkative- and of course I'm so proud! She has 75+ words, puts a lot of 2-word phrases together ("mommy outside" or "Daddy's shoes") and some 2 & 3-word phrases that she treats like 1 ("hereyougo" or "goodboy"). Her teachers at school say she is helpful (euphemism for bossy maybe?). She definitely likes helping me cook in the kitchen, Sundays have become our cookie baking days. We drag a chair up to the counter and she helps pour the ingredients into the mixer and stir. Yes, there is more than a bit of taste testing along the way.











She is showing some fierce independence (again- mini me perhaps?) often not wanting us to read to her, but wanting to "read" to herself, nor wanting assistance with eating or teeth-brushing. She is less afraid of the world these days and loves the slides at the park, and will (sometimes too fearlessly) walk up to pet a strange dog.

 She has become such a wild child at times, I can't believe her energy, racing through the house squealing, running after the cat, pretending to tickle us, it never ends! She loves singing and we make up a lot of songs about the mundane (yesterday it was about "Dr. Levine, the nicest doctor we've ever seen" to prep for the peds visit).

Brunch for my birthday last month. I think the pony tail makes her look so old

One of the things that amazes me the most about our beautiful child is her growing imagination and "play pretend" skills. She "talks" on the phone, treats Anna like a real person (changing her diaper, feeding her, wiping her nose), pretends to go to sleep saying "night night" then opening her eyes and exclaiming "good morning!" Yesterday at the park she was playing restaurant with us. Telling us to sit on the little benches and bringing us our food saying "thereyougo" and "thank you". My heart could burst watching her play. It is absolute purity and magic.







On her own she took Anna to go potty while we were in the hotel in Toronto a few weeks back.

Serving us food in her restaurant at the park. Is this a sign we go out to eat too often?

Happy 18 months my little love! It gets better and better with you every day.

Tilly does an art project almost every day at school. This "self-portrait" was too funny to not include. Our Picasso! ha!