18 months old

Today is Taylor’s 18 month birthday. A year and a half old. Which is nice, in that when people now ask me how old she is, I can just say, Oh, a year and a half, instead of spouting off her age in months. Which, unless they are parents themselves, they just look annoyed that you forced them to do math in their heads. So, there you go dumb, baby-less people, my precious girl is a year and a half old this month. But coming up she’ll be 19 months, so put on your thinking caps.

And I don’t read any parenting magazines or keep up with the baby-charts anymore, but I’m assuming that month-17 is the month that both their brains and personalities kick-it up a few notches. Because we’ve got one smart and sassy girl on our hands. Yep, obviously those brainiacs over at Baby Einstein know what they’re selling, because I’m pretty sure my daughter is turning into a genius. She is always trying to figure things out, snapping and unsnapping her booster seat, buckling and unbuckling her shoes, building with and knocking down her blocks, undressing and dressing her baby dolls, putting things back where they belong. Smarts. OCD. Whatever you want to call it, my girl is an itty-bitty think tank.

Her vocabulary has also grown in leaps and bounds since last month. And not just in WHAT she’s saying, but WHEN she’s saying it. She may babble and squeal here and there, but now she is actually TALKING to us. Asking for things, telling me what things are. She’s especially proud of her body parts knowledge, pointing to and saying, Mouth, Ears, Nose, Hair, Belly, and Eyes. But, be advised, she doesn’t warn you when she’s gonna show you where your eyes are. So if you get eye-gouged by my daughter, don’t say I didn’t tell you so.

And for some reason this month, I went from being Momma to Mommy. And not just mommy, I’m now MOMMY! And she’ll scream it at the top of her lungs like she’s trapped in an alligator’s mouth or being force-fed broccoli. And she’ll keep screaming it until I’m right next to her going, WHAT? And then she’ll just give me the cutest smile in the whole world and continue on with whatever she’s doing. And I’m fine with this, because I’m her Mommy. And she's my precious girl.

She also developed an obsession with car keys last month. Weird, I know, but whenever we go shopping and she’s in the cart, she’ll squeal KEEEEZ until I hand her my set, and then she’ll spend that rest of the trip in silence, holding the ignition key and forcing it in and out of the notches and grooves of the cart. Which is great in that I don’t have to worry about her grabbing things off the shelves or throwing things out of the cart. Not so great in that when we’re done and I actually need those keys to drive us to our house, and I have to dislodge them from her power-grip and she has a total melt down and sobs, Keeeez, Keeeez, Keeeez the whole ride home.

However, Taylor’s number-one fixation are still her beloved baby dolls. In fact, we need to have at least one baby with us at ALL TIMES. I have babies stashed all over the place, because HEAVEN FORBID we not have a baby doll with us for 30 seconds. Car - check. Diaper bag - check. Jogging stroller - check. And all of her dolls go through cycles, with her giving all her love to only one of the many we own at a time. We already have quite a doll collection started, and she is just precious with all of them. She truly does act like a mother to her babies, giving them bottles, placing them in her booster seat, strolling them around in her baby stroller, kissing them before she goes to bed. And NO, Bloggers, that doesn’t mean she’s ready for a little brother or sister. It just means she loves baby dolls. Trust me, I’m still trying to figure this one out. I am not quite ready to add an infant to the mix. Plus, I’m pretty sure my dog would run away if we brought another attention-stealer home.

So everyday is a new adventure, and now that she’s getting bigger, we are having so much fun watching the world through her eyes. Like going to the zoo earlier this week. She LOVED it. And it wasn’t just being outside and walking around, she actually enjoyed looking at the animals and interacting with the other kids there.

And that is so much different that when we took her to the Nature Center a year ago, and she just sat like a blob in her stroller, more interested in when lunch was than petting the animals.

And with the end of the year closing in on us, I can’t wait to see her reactions to Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I can already tell you, she’s gonna like them. Because they involve candy, feasts, presents and lots and lots of yumminess. And where as last year, she didn’t know what was going on and really didn’t care, now she will be involved in creating our new family traditions. And while she still isn’t old enough to frost cookies or run down the stairs on Christmas morning, I’m pretty sure the next few months are going to be packed with more awww-moments and milestones than the number of baby dolls we have under this roof. Yep, THAT many. And we can’t wait.