17, almost 18 months

My baby girl is almost a year and a half! I felt the need to do another update post so I remember all of her little milestones (they don't feel little to me though, she seems to be growing so much!)

These last couple of months have been so fun! Savannah is constantly wanting to learn new things. Her favorite thing right now is counting. She counts everything! She only knows a few numbers, and doesn't really get them in order, but she loves to line things up and make you count them for her while she points at them. Like this morning in the bath, she was lining up all the soap, shampoo, and toys on the bath ledge and pointed to each one as I would count "One, two, three, four..." etc. When we counted all of them, she would yell "More!" and we would do it again. She counts everything. Books, toys, fingers, toes and magnets.

 (She can't get enough of the swings!)

Speaking of magnets, she's obsessed with them! Bryant's parents gave her a magnetic chalkboard/whiteboard that came with magnetic letters and numbers. It's hanging in her room and when she's not coloring with chalk all over it (and my walls) she will grab the magnets and move them from the board to the fridge and back again. She especially likes to hand them to me one at a time and say "is it?" and I'll tell her "That's an 'A' it makes the 'Ahhh' sound." and she will repeat "Ayyy!" and she will do that with every letter and number. She likes to figure out what else magnets will stick to besides the fridge. I have found them on the washer and dryer, the metal bar on her crib, on the metal legs of my desk, and I've watched her try to stick them to the cabinets and even her own tummy!

 (Too cool for school)

She likes to go for walks, especially the ones where she gets to walk and not just be in her stroller. She likes to pick up sticks and rocks and put them in her pockets (or down her shirt or in her diaper if she doesn't have pockets...) And she likes to point at everything and yell "Issa wock!" ("It's a rock!"). Especially sidewalks, asphalt, and brick walls. We come home every day with 3 or 4 rocks to add to her collection (AKA, outside in the garden.)

 (pig-tails!)

She's learning so many animal sounds. And she not only knows the sounds, but she knows the animals too. If you show her a picture with a bunch of animals and ask her where the horse, or the wolf, or the kitty is, she can point them out and make the sound that goes with it. Her favorite sound is a monkey, and she walks around acting like one and saying "ooh ooh ah ah!" all day!

 (Eating at Noodles and Co.)

She's learning more and more words everyday. She's a good copy-cat and can repeat almost any word you ask her to say (she won't always remember it or what it means 10 minutes later). She's also learning to put words together. She can say "uh-oh mama!" and "mo peese" (more please) or "baba mama" (baba is our word for bottle) or "Ace, sit!". My favorite word she's learned is "Yay!" and she says it for everything. If I ask her if she wants a treat she yells "yay yay yay!" or if I ask her if she wants to watch a few minutes of Elmo, she responds "Eh-mo! Yay! Yay! Yay! Eh-mo! 

 (She likes to brush her teeth. She will brush them for a good 10 minutes before I make her stop!)

She likes to jump and "gallop" everywhere. Anytime she gets excited she jumps, and if she's running somewhere, she does this little skipping thing where she shruggs her shoulders and gallops away. It cracks me up every time!

She LOVES books. The first thing she says in the morning is "Mama, baba!" so I will change her diaper, and go get her a bottle, and then she points at the windowsill where all her books are and say "Mama, boo!" (mama, book!") So I'll pull one off and she yells "Boo! yay, yay, yay!" We spend a good solid hour a day pulling all of her books of the shelf, sitting in the rocking chair and looking at all the pictures (and usually counting everything in them). By the end of the day, all of her books are on the floor. I can trust her with paper books now, as opposed to just board books, because she is careful with them and wont rip or eat them now. 

(reading books in her chair) 

She's also learned how go down the stairs all by herself! She's been able to go up them since she first started crawling, but she was always way too scared to go down them. (We've never needed to get a baby gate). My mom finally sat down and showed her how to go down, and after a lot of encouragement, she finally got the nerves to do it herself. She still wont go down alone. If she wants to go downstairs, she will come get me and point at them. I'll walk a few steps down and then she will follow me. No complaints here though! I wont have to worry about her sneaking down them without me knowing for a while I hope!

(Going down the stairs like a big kid!)

She is so smart when it comes to using the iPad and our phones. She knows how to turn them on, unlock them, swipe the screen and open her favorite games. She's got a few educational games on there, but she also really likes angry birds and fruit ninja. She also knows how to turn on netflix and watch Sesame Street, Barney or Shaun the Sheep. 

She's such a girly-girl these days. She loves to have her nails painted, and really love shoes! She will constantly yell "Shoe!" and pull out all her shoes and hand them to me to put on her feet. Bryant's boss gave her a whole bag of shoes and she went crazy! She pulled them all out and had me help her try every single one on! She was so proud of them and was showing them off!

She also went to her first week at nursery! HALLELUJAH! I've been looking foreword to that moment for the last 6 months! I dropped her off and the nursery teacher said "you may want to come get her after 5 or 10 minutes to get her used to it". Pffsssh! As soon as I dropped her off, I knew she would be fine for the whole 2 hours. She walked to the middle of the room, did a slow turn with a huge grin on her face, then looked at me and yelled "Bye!" and was off playing. It was like she had just walked into wonderland! I did come check on her after the first hour. They had closed the door and I looked though the little eye hole into the room and she was standing over a boy with a big lego in her hand. I knew just what she was thinking, but I was too late to stop her. She smacked the boy in the head with the lego! He looked up at her confused, then went back to playing. Savannah looked confused at the lego in her hand, then tossed it aside and continued to play with the boy. Oh well, no harm, no foul right? The nursery teacher said she was surprised at how well she did her first time at nursery. I told her I knew she would be fine because we walk past it every Sunday and Savannah knew that there were other kids, snacks and lots of new toys in there. She would cry every time we passed it and I wouldn't let her go in. And can I just say, church is so much nicer when you aren't sitting in the hallway with a wild toddler for the entire 3 hours?

 (My little nature lover at Zion's National Park)

Wow, she's really learned so much in the last few months! She's growing up so stinkin' fast!