18 months

Is she 18 months already? Why, yes she is! Sunday we even took her to nursery for the first time (2 days early, but no one is counting, right?) She barely glanced back before marching on in. Devin went to check on her after Sunday School and he said that she was happily playing with some plastic eggs and ham (should it surprise us that she was playing with food? No, probably not...) I really, really like this age minus the fits. It is so fun to watch her learn about the world around her and to pick up on new things all the time. Here are some things about our Hals:

- She really, really likes food. My sister was here for the last little while and I was surprised at how much more Hallie eats than Sadie. Perhaps I should be worried?

-Her favorite foods are cheese, ice cream, mac-n-cheese, and bananas. Still working on getting her to eat more vegetables. She still doesn't like potatoes. Almost anything else she will eat.

-If she is in a mood where she doesn't want to eat what I have cooked, she just won't. Even if she hasn't tried it. Frustrating! She will drop it off the edge of her high chair one chunk at a time. So defiant.

-She really loves water, despite this picture showing otherwise! She has some great crusty faces, as you can tell. We went swimming while Jennifer was here and she had a hay day. She likes to think she doesn't need my help in the pool, but uh, according to me, she still does! -

-A few of her favorite things: balls, babies, stuffed animals, coloring, drawing, brushing her teeth, dancing, leading music, riding her giraffe bike my mom got her for Christmas, writing on the sidewalks with chalk, playing with the neighbor girls, eating, her blankie, her teddy bears, singing songs, reading books, doing puzzles. Okay she likes a lot of stuff.

-She still likes to walk around and pretend to talk on the cell phone. She has taken to pretending to text too. Uh oh. She also likes to read herself books. I will often find her downstairs just sitting at her shelf of books reading to herself.

-She is sure a cheeser. She LOVES to be the center of attention. She craves attention like no child I have ever seen before. Seriously. It is ridiculous. She knows how to put on a show.

-My favorite thing to have her do is JUMP. She crouches down really low, bends her knees, springs as hard as she can, and doesn't make it off the floor. It's hilarious. Is this considered torturing your kid?

-She is really good at following commands now. I can tell her to take out her diaper and she will. I can tell her to turn on the radio and she will. I will tell her to pick a book and she will. It's lovely.

-She can sing "Old MacDonald" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." Though she prefers the latter since Kylee was here and got her started on that. The video below is of her singing Old MacDonald. Since she doesn't know all the words in between, she just kind of makes them up. She does that when she talks too... she will carry on a long old conversation without even using any words.

-She continues to get into everything that she should not, such as the laptop, cell phones, food, etc. At least she likes to listen to Elder Holland when she gets to the laptop, right?

-She knows a lot of words and will repeat almost anything we tell her to. The mystery is that she will still not say milk or water, instead she says num num for milk and nummy for water. Weird. Some of the words she says a lot are mom, dad, shoe, cheese, please, kitty, teddy, duck, dog, woof woof, up, book, ball, i love you, hallie, baby, sadie, cookie, blankie, nose, no, eye, head, teeth, hi, yeah, uh-oh, nana, oooooh, stinky, poo, and still ewie.

-She is really into nodding her head and shaking her head. She gets really pronounced with the head nods. For example, Jennifer was asking her if she was going to be the ring leader between her and Sadie. She nodded her head up and down really slowly with her eyes wide indicating "you better believe it!" Devin and I will ask her if she loves mom and if she loves dad. Most of the time mom either gets a slight nod or a shake no. Dad pretty much always gets a huge nod. Still playing favorites, it's true. Oh well!

-She is generally a very happy girl and makes life super exciting! We sure love her. What was life like before we had her crazy little spirit? I have no idea...but it must have been boring.

We love our Hallie girl!