Happy 18 months!

Hello strangers! Remember when I got pregnant and puked for 3 months and subsequently forgot I had a blog?   Yep, that happened.  But I’m getting finally feeling like myself, my bathrooms have been cleaned, I have dinner in the crock pot, and it’s time to resurrect the blog. :)  I may go back and do a few long overdue posts like Halloween and a fall summary so just warning ya.

First things first.  Happy 18 months to my darling daughter!  (technically, she’s almost 20 months now).   Umm, where did that year and a half go?  For this post, I’ll focus on some other “names” you could call this sweet girl.My Little Peanut:  Her height and head circumference are almost identical to Owen at this age, but she’s a full 3 pounds lighter.  Where Owen was wearing clothes about 3-6 months older than his age, she’s wearing exactly the 18-24 month size.
Height: 2 ft 7.9 in (57th percentile)
Weight: 21 lbs 13.2 oz (only the 15th percentile)
Head: 46.6 cm (52nd percentile – still a perfect head model size)
My Talker:
This is such a fun age.  She’s learning so much.  I feel bad comparing, but I feel like she’s learning at even more lightning speed than Owen did.  Maybe that’s a girl thing?  Or just a second born thing?  She has too many words to count and is already putting together small sentences.  She loves to sing Jesus Loves Me and the Wheels on the Bus.  She can do about 20 animals noises on request, can name most of her body parts, and loves to count:

My fashionista:  This little girl loves her some fashion.  I admit that I have totally fostered this in her and have no apologies for it.  haha  She doesn’t mind being all fancied up and now asks for a headband.  She LOVES shoes (random side note:  I adore kid shoes.  I’m not quite sure what my problem is because I’ve owned the same pair of about 10 shoes for years most from Target or Payless.  Read: cheap.  But oh my the kiddo shoes.  Our favorite brand by far is See Kai Run and thank goodness for scoring some awesome deals on ebay. /endsidenote). 

My mom helps to keep her well dressed and I love the hunt for a good deals, especially at All Things Kids, my favorite local consignment shop.

My mess maker:  Leave this girl alone for more than a minute and I promise that you will have a mess on your hands when you return.  Unlike Owen who really didn’t get into much more than his toys, Ellie gets into anything and everything: the toilet, the cat food, the crayons, and as pictured below my make up and other school room supplies.  At least she almost got the eyeliner in the right spot.

My adventurer : I need to get this girl in some gymnastics or dance classes stat.  If she can climb on it, she does.  She really has no fear and tackles most situations head-on.  We were bringing everything up from our basement and this cat stand was down there.  It wasn’t in front of the window for more than a few minutes before I looked over and saw this. My brother lover:  Haha terrible name title, but what can I say?  She loves that older brother of hers.  She asks for him the minute he gets up.  She follows him around and tries to copy whatever he does.  For the most part, they get along really well and seeing their relationship makes me less nervous for adding more siblings to the mix.  What could be better than more siblings right? :) My Picky Eater
I had no idea how easy I had it with Owen and his eating.  Sure, he didn’t eat enough vegetables, but overall he tried most things I put in front of him.  Not so much with his sister.  She won’t touch any form of meat, vegetables, or pretty much any food that’s mixed together (read: any of my dinners).  For the most part, she survives on oatmeal, toast, cheese, yogurt, milk, and fruit.  We try to add in new things everyday but so far no luck.  Hoping this gets better as she gets older.  As of two weeks ago, another big change in her diet is that we are done breastfeeding. (finally!)  I’ll write more on this in my pregnancy update.  As we’ve been trying to stop this for awhile, I wasn’t really sad at all when we were finished.
My Still Not Perfect Sleeper:
Ellie is definitely learning better sleep habits that was forced on her brother.  She takes one afternoon nap from about 12:30-2 (or sometimes 2:30).  She lays down in her bed and goes to sleep all on her own!  Bed time is equally as easy.  Books, Bible, songs, prayer and she points to her bed wanting to lay down.  The only thing we’re still working on is getting through the night with no wakes and not being ready to the day to start at 5am!(As you can also see from this picture, we didn’t quite make it to 2 years before turning her car seat around.  She is a much happier car rider now).Trying to get a few more minutes out of nap time with cuddles in the chair.

What else?  We’re going through a kinds hard time of her wanting to be held all the time which gets particularly hard during the dinner prep hour.  And she gets frustrated easily when she doesn’t have the right words for what she needs.  She loves her pacifiers to death and currently carries around 2 blankets everywhere she goes.

And that’s the current going-ons with Ms. Ellison Jakeh.  I just love her spunky little personality and can’t imagine our family without her!