ada charlotte {18 months)

Ada girl,

How is it that you're 18 months old?! It's already your half birthday! Sweet girl, we just love you so much. We still say ALL. THE. TIME. how freaking cute you are. Just the other day I said to your dad, "I'm glad we're still obsessed with her after 18 months" haha :) We just can't get over all the cuteness! :) It's so fun to see you learn new things. It's always crazy to remember how you used to be so tiny and immobile, since now you are just all over the place. I love you so much!

Stats

• 22.2 pounds (44%) -- lookie there! You FINALLY doubled your birthweight 😂
• 31.5 inches (41%)
• Size 3 diapers by day, size 4 by night. Size 4 would probably be good for the day now, too, though.
• Mostly 9-12 month clothes, but some of those are too short for you. However, bigger sizes are just overall too big. 

Words
New words in the past 3 months are:

• hello
• no
• uh oh
• go
• amen
• Ada
• ow
• oh
• bello (bellybutton)
• ball

Words you've said once or twice:

• Lacey
• happy
• puppy

New signs are:

• more
• eat/hungry

Plus you understand a lot more of what we say :)

Milestones

• You now have eight teeth (four top, four bottom -- your bottom teeth make a W haha)
• You are pointing to facial parts (eyes, eyebrows, nose, cheeks, ears, mouth, tongue) and your belly button
• You've been using spoons and forks more, but I still usually put the food on them for you. You're getting to the point where you don't want me to -- little miss independent!
• You went on your first flights! And surprisingly did very well despite your totally thrown off schedule! (Well, that, and we got lucky and you got a fever so you just wanted to cuddle/sleep for an entire 4-hour flight!) You were only wild for 1/4 flights, and it was the shortest flight (1.5 hours), so I called it a win 😁
• You started folding your arms for prayers around 16 months :) (well, at least for the first 2 seconds of prayers)
• You "neigh" and "woof" when you see horses and dogs. Sometimes when you see a big dog, you neigh. It is hilarious!

Obsessions

• You've really developed an obsession for books in the last little while. You want to read books alllllll day long. You also want to fold books backward and bite them, which we can't seem to convince you otherwise, despite manyyyy instances of putting your books in time-out.
• You are such a little dancer! Anytime music comes on, you are shaking your hips, bobbing your head, or bouncing up and down! It's sooo cute. You'll even dance when there's no music if we ask you to show us your dance moves :)
• You love going on stroller rides and walks (where you refuse to let me hold your hand). You're always leading us to our shoes or to the door to let us know you want to walk.

Random Tidbits

• You really loved Christmas! You were so joyful when you opened all your presents :)
• For about two months, you loved oatmeal. Now you're over it and I'm again on the hunt for a breakfast you'll eat other than chocolate chip pancakes haha
• You love dipping your food in ketchup! It's so cute to me :)
• I was pretty surprised to learn that I could teach you to help clean up after yourself. You say "night night" to your stuffed animals and put them away in your big basket, you help me pick up any food you throw while you eat, you put your books in a basket, and you even help me move the laundry! Of course, you only do these things when we're supervising your every movement and enforcing these things haha :) But you were doing it all before you were 16 months old.
• You do high fives followed by fist bumps now :)
• For a while, you gave double hugs at bedtime. If it was my turn to hold you during your song, I'd pass you to Daddy for a hug when the song ended, he'd pass you back to me for a hug, and then we'd repeat that process before finally laying you down. You seriously give the cutest hugs :)
• I thought I'd be a fun mom and take you to the library for Tales for Tots. We got there about 10 minutes early, so for those 10 minutes, I let you walk around the big room. You gave huge smiles and waves to everyone there! Seriously you're such a social baby. But then when the tales actually started and I tried to contain you in my lap, you were not having it, and you threw a giant tantrum. We had to leave because you couldn't keep your cool! haha
• You figured out that you can lead us places. You'll take our finger/hand and take us to whatever it is you want. For a while, you would only lead us by the thumb. If we tried to give you a finger, you'd let go and find our thumb. It was so funny!
• Daddy and I call each other "baby" quite frequently. So sometimes Dad will walk into a room and I'll say, "Hi Baby," and then you'll say "Hi Baby," too. It's so funny how you call us baby! :)
• I always heard people say that the only nice thing about sick babies is that they're more cuddly. Well, you've been sick (with colds) several times in your short life, but you've never been cuddly! That is, until about a month ago when you got a high fever. Then you were alllll about those cuddles, and Daddy and I LOVED it! Then you got another fever a few weeks later on our flight to Texas. I know fevers don't feel good, but I gotta say I kinda love it when you have them because you're so sweet and cuddly! :)
• You hate getting your diaper changed, yet again. You scream and toss and turn and it makes things so difficult! This is the third phase of diaper-change-hating. I'm pretty over it haha.
• You like sticking your thumb through foods -- normal ones like olives, but also abnormal ones like pepperoni and bread. You're so silly :)
• You have been throwing food a little less in the recent months, which is nice. Sometimes you'll start handing me food, rather than throwing it, if you don't want to eat it. But usually if you don't want to eat it you still throw it haha.
• We did your first time at nursery (at church) a week early since we were in Texas. Just as I expected, you weren't sad at all to leave us! I set you down in the room with NO familiar faces, and you walked away from me toward the toys without looking back at all. When we picked you up, the leaders said you did great! I'm sooo excited for you to finally be in nursery! 🙌🙌
• We've always put you to sleep with nothing else in your crib, but since you're older, I decided you can have something in there now, so we started putting you down with your "Ada" blanket that you got from Granny and Papa for Christmas. I love the way you snuggle with your blanket! It was especially helpful on our flights because it made you much more willing to snuggle when we laid the blanket over our shoulders. The only problem is that it won't be winter forever, and that's a warm blanket . . . 
• I think it was Dad who made a fish face at you a few weeks ago. At first you couldn't quite figure it out, but now you're really good at it. You also use that face to give kisses sometimes :)
• We read this book called The Watermelon Seed, and you love it. The storyline is essentially that a crocodile loves eating watermelon, but one day he swallows a seed and he fears that all these bad things will happen to him. Then he burps up the seed and all is well. So on one page, it says "burrrrrrrrrrrp!" and on the next page it says, "Oh! Here's the seed." Without fail, whenever I turn to that page, you say, "Oh!" immediately. Haha it is sooo cute. Dad says you've done the "burrrrrrp" part before, too. Too funny!
• You are still solidly taking two naps/day! For a while I thought you were really close to transitioning, but on the days that we do just one nap (Sundays because of church), it's pretty much a nightmare. You're okay during church, but you spend the whole afternoon after your nap being sooo cranky. Before our trip to Texas, you were usually doing 30-45 minutes for your morning nap and about 1.5 hours for your afternoon nap, but since TX (we got back 3 days ago), you've been solidly taking 1.5-2 hours naps for both naps. Haha you're definitely catching up from all the missed/delayed naps on the trip!
• I cut your remaining newborn hair when you were 16 months. You were sick and that long hair was getting all tangled up and gross in your snot. I just sort of chopped it, and it looked kinda bad at first, but now that it's grown more, it's a lot more blended. 

before

after

• Who knows when you'll ever get a real haircut, because you do NOT sit still for anything involving your hair. It's always such a struggle to get it into a ponytail! Today, I literally had to wrap my legs around your belly and we were both kinda rolling around on the ground while I got the ponytail holder in. You're crazy, girl. 

Crazy, but I love you oh so much :)

Love always,

Mama