Our baby girl is now 18 months. Since she is truly walking all over, does that mean she isn't my baby any longer? Nah!!! She will be my baby for a very long time! :)
She now weighs 20 lbs 10 oz and is 31 inches long. Brent turned her car seats around and she loves the new view. It is a bit harder to get her buckled in to her seat now, but I am sure it won't take too long for us to get used to the new position.
She finally cut her two bottom eye teeth, the right one on 7/2/09 and the left on 7/6/09. Now there are no more teeth to cut until her 2 year molars.
Samantha communicates verbally more and more every day. She amazes us with how much she says. She has three new signs which are star, help and book. Her other signs include more, please, hurt, milk, eat and all done. She has also made up her own sign for washing hands, and does it every time I change her diaper, rubbing her hands together like I do when I use the hand sanitizer after changing her. Some of her words (there are too many to remember them all!) are ca-kee (turkey, which she won't eat but loves to say!), Bible (and she knows which of her books are her Bibles, too) baby, home, bapee (strawberry), bappa (apple), nummies (this is what she calls blackberries and rasberries), cracker, hot, hat, thank you, bless you, hi, bye, keys, trees, tickle, lambie, car, amen, green, Elmo, ball, poopoo and peepee.
She doesn't have a word for dog, duck or bird, but she says ah, ah (arf, arf) when she is trying to tell us about a dog or sees or hears a dog, and says cack cack (quack quack) to refer to a duck or any other bird. We keep trying to tell her that other birds say tweet, tweet, but she just keeps quacking.
Samantha is very funny about the word hot. She says it all the time, and always has to be reassured that her food isn't hot. She also recognizes that it is hot outside and that the sun makes the ground hot, so, whenever she sees the sun shining on the ground next to a shadow, she looks up and says "Hot?" whether we are inside or out. I think I started this because she got upset that I picked her up and carried her once we were about to be past the shade of the building when we were walking one day, and I explained to her that I had to carry her because the ground is hot where there is no shade. Ever since that day, she says hot when she sees the sun on the ground.
She has said a few two word phrases but each of them was only said once, Daddy's hat and car keys. She said one more, but I didn't write it down and now I can't remember what it was anymore.
She is very good about letting me put her ear molds in, now, and will leave them in throughout her bath. She is the one who takes them out afterward, but she does wait until I tell her she can do so.
Samantha still loves her books more than any other toys and will sit on the floor reading them to herself for long periods of time. She has also put motions to a couple of her books..."Barnyard Dance" and "Shake it Up Pup" With Barnyard dance, she dances and bounces. With Shake it Up Pup, she dances, then taps her feet (looks more like stomping to me, but the book says "the next thing I know I'm tapping my feet" and this is the part that she does it to, so it must be her version of tapping. And then she bounces around as I finish reading the story. She just started doing this on her own one day, and I have no idea how she figured out what tapping feet is, but somehow she did. We have tried to get a video of her doing this, but everytime we try, she stops doing it. The rest of the time she does it spontaneously. It is so cute!
A few weeks ago, I was reading a weekly e-mail that I get tailored to Samantha's age and development. It said that at her age, making pretend forts with tables, chairs and blankets is a great activity. I had been noticing that she would crawl under the end table in her room and would back herslef into tight corners to sit and play after I read that. Then a few days later, Samantha discovered that she could go into her closet. She LOVED it, now she will go into the closet and will play quietly in there with the curtain pulled shut behind her for 30 minutes at a time. She usually gets mad when I go to get her out. I guess I don't have to build a fort after all, she has made her own.
She has learned how to click her tongue and thinks it is hilarious when I do it back to her. My doing so hasn't failed to make her laugh yet. She will sing a song to me nearly every time I ask her to, and it sounds so sweet. Almost every time I change her diaper, she grabs the lotion and asks me to put it on her. Then she helps by rubbing it all over her tummy while I do her arms and legs.
She loves her daddy and when she gets excited about him, she will do the daddy chant. I have no idea where she got the idea, but one day, she started saying Da..dee..da..dee" over and over with a big smile on her face when she saw him. We love it, it is so adorable!
Samantha will ask me to sing "This little light of mine" by holding her index finger out and waving it around, and her favorite part of the song is "don't let Satan (puff) it out." She starts that almost before I can finsh the first verse. She will also do her hands as bubbles and clap to pop the bubbles when we sing about the fishy swimming in the water. She loves to hear the creation songs from her Bible Class and even started singing "thank you God" along with me when I sing that part.
She is fiercely independent and wants to do everything herself. She gets mad and pulls her hand away while walking most of the time. This often results in her being carried or put in a shopping cart, which does not make her happy at all.
Another month has come and gone with our sweet baby girl and we are definitely enjoying the ride!
