Lydia Elise: 16 - 17 months

This girl is 17 months old. She is such a happy little person and enjoys life to the fullest. Her sense of humor has expanded so much this month, and so although I don't have a posed picture for her main picture this month - this is the perfect representation of this past month. Full of giggles and happiness. 

As far as stats go for this month: she is in 12 months clothes - although most of her fall clothes happen to be 18 months. Some of the 18 month clothes are obviously too big. Some of them seem to fit fine. She is in size 4 shoes. Size 3 diapers. I put her on a scale at David's grandma's house and she weighed almost 22 pounds. She has two top teeth (the other front tooth is just coming in) and three bottom teeth.

Lydia loves lots of things: Climbing. Dogs. Food. Her Dad. Not necessarily in that order.  

--We had our ladder out to hang some curtains over our glass door and Lydia climbed to the top all by herself. It's really just lucky that we looked over and saw her making her way up because she would have been at the top before you could say "Is that baby climbing a ladder?" David stood by her the whole time to make sure that she was safe - but she did it all by herself. 

-- She loves to run all over the place. Sometimes the only way to contain her is to put her on my shoulders. Otherwise she runs ALL over the place. Luckily she tends to enjoy the ride (although sometimes she thinks it's funny to pull my hair and try to get my glasses off my face). She rides like this a lot because she is so. darn. fast. that it's hard to keep up with her otherwise.

 --Lydia has started to be very opinionated. She gets an idea in her head and then wants to do it that very second. (I wonder who she gets that from?) If I'm not fast enough she stands behind me and pushes me to where she wants me to be. 

--She's so curious about the world around her. She finds weird things and then hangs on to them for hours at a time or sees something out of the ordinary and fixates on it. Two examples below: she found this little toothbrush in her toy bin and wouldn't let it go. She just liked it. We also happened to be going out for breakfast at Ihop (it was my birthday) and she saw the giant blow up polar bear across the street. It took us several seconds to even figure out what she was looking and pointing at. Because for us - it was just background. However, she was amazed at this giant polar bear and kept looking and pointing at it through the window all during breakfast. She loved it. 

--Did I mention that she likes climbing? She does. A lot. She learned how to climb on top of the kitchen table by pulling herself up onto a chair and then onto the table. Which means that the tech center is fair game as well. She can even climb up onto our entertainment center by climbing up onto the leather bench and then stretching her body out to reach the entertainment center and then pulling herself around onto it by holding the side. This picture is her climbing on my parents entertainment center. She just likes climbing up as far as she can go. Also with climbing, she likes to go up and down stairs all by herself. She briefly went through a phase where she was okay going down the stairs backwards, but she is back to trying to go down forward. She scoots all the way to the front of the step and then drops down landing her bum on the step she was just standing on. She is surprisingly fast using this method. 

--Did I mention that she likes dogs? Especially my parents dog Dante. We've been able to spend some time in Morgan this month and Lydia absolutely adores this dog. It's ridiculous.  But really cute. She also loves any dog that we see walking down the street or while out and about. She just likes them. 

--Once again she made the cutest little pirate. It's fun now that she is able to interact with her environment a little bit more. 

--Lydia somehow found a pencil and decided that she is going to become an artist. I was strangely proud of her (which I'm sure I will never feel that way again) and felt like it marked a milestone in my life as a parent. Mostly I just laughed and then took the pencil away. Mother-of-the year award goes to me. Oh well. I'm sure there will be more times to try to teach her that drawing is not for walls.

--She's started to say more words! It's kind of hard because I think that I'm pretty strict as far as what qualifies as a word goes. I think that she says a lot more than what I give her credit for, but I don't really count things unless it sounds very similar and/or she repeats it several times. Otherwise, I usually just attribute it to my imagination. However, she says Dante, airplane, peach, Mom, Dad, and Grandma. My very favorite thing that she says (she just started doing this) is that she says "Uh-huh" to pretty much any question that you ask her. She responds in the sweetest little voice- "Do you think mama looks pretty today, Lydia?"  "Uh-huh". I love it!  However, if you ask her something that she really doesn't want - she will smile and then start shaking her head side to side violently. Often this shaking of her head actually knocks her over because she is so vigorous. She is also really good as signing food, airplane, all done, and myriad of other signs. I love that she is communicating. 

There are so many things that I wish I could record - but I told myself that I would just do what I could do and not beat myself up if I couldn't record everything. Most of all I just wish I could create a snapshop of how sweet and happy she is. We certainly love this girl.