ELIZA - 18 MONTHS

On Wednesday Eliza turned 18 months! Haven't had her check up yet so I can't give her physical stats but we are grateful that she is healthy and developing well and oh so sweet. We adore her completely. She has grown up so much this summer and I just can’t believe how big and independent she is.  She has a strong personality, can be quite stubborn, and often tries my patience, but can also be so kind and sweet. Caleb reminds me that she’s going to be influential some day! She loves to do things by herself and does not like to be forced to do anything. It requires patience but I've learned if I can just wait up to 30 seconds, she'll do what I ask (lay down for a diaper change, put the chapstick away, etc.) and then it won't cause a huge dramatic tantrum. On the contrary it'll make her feel so happy that she obeyed all by herself. But she likes to do it on HER time! We'll work on that. As she’s learned more and more words it’s become a lot easier to keep her rational. :) She talks well and says lots of words, and still does a lot of chattering that we can't understand but it sure sounds like she knows what she's talking about! Some of her newest words I can think of that are pretty cute are “wolf” (cousin Kayden let us borrow his stuffed animal wolf and she loves to take it to bed!), nelk (milk/drink), "kay" (she says kay after everything and I love it), dirty, cow, and eyeball. She does not like me to sing to her very often. She usually shoots me down with "no! no! no!" She does love to "sing" herself and will often join in during church and when we sing as a family at home. She also loves necklaces, BABIES, shoes, dogs, clothes, swimming, her paci ("poppy"), phones, steps, food (especially grapes and most recently froot loops), nelk/wawa, and doing anything that we do! She will let just about anybody hold her, at least for a few minutes, but she does love her Mommy and Daddy. She runs in place when she's mad or when she's really excited. We walked to the ONO snowcone shack with Stephanie, Jonathan, and Vivian across from the creamery to celebrate Eliza's half birthday!

We love this cute girl!