17 Months Old

This post is extremely late. Madeline will be 18 months in 2 weeks! Better late, than never though. This month has been so much fun with our little girl. And it does seem like she is a little girl now. I don't know if it is because she is doing so many big things or because we know there is another one on the way. But, really, no matter how big she gets, she will always be my baby (for some reason, Mariah Carey comes to mind :)).

(This has nothing to do with the picture. We left our camera at my parents' house for the past few weeks. So, I don't really have a lot of pictures to post.) Anyways, Madeline is talking so much. She basically tries to say anything we ask her to say. She is putting 2 words together to make little sentences like, "Mommy sit", "bubbles pop" and "Daddy boo boo". "No" has definitely been a favorite word this month. And for about a week or so she was even saying, "no way." It was really funny. It don't know where she picked it up from. The one word she still will not say is, "milk". She will only do the sign for it. She will quietly sign "milk" in her carseat until we happen to look back and see that she is asking for it. Last Sunday at church I was holding her while I was talking to someone and she was doing the sign where I didn't notice. So, she grabbed my face and pulled it around so I could see her hand doing the sign. I'm not sure why she is holding on to that one sign.

Apparently last night she read the word, "ho" in the bathtub with Andrew. She did it again for me after she was done with her bath. I don't know if it was because of the red and green letters or if she really recognizes that word. But, I guess we can say she can read a word. Speaking of ho ho, she thinks that her Little People Noah is Santa. She calls him "Ho Ho" no matter how many times we correct her.

Her favorite books right now are Dick and Jane and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. When she wants Dick and Jane she says, "uh oh" because her favorite part is when Baby Sally gets stuck in the umbrella. When she wants The Very Hungry Caterpillar, she says, "cheese", because she likes to pretend eat the cheese in the book and feed it to daddy, me or the caterpillar.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, she is very much into pretending. The other day she took Elmo to the fish store and held him up so he could look at all the fish and said, "Elmo see." She plays with her Little People things alot. Especially while I am getting ready in the mornings. She pretends a lot with food. She is always pretend feeding people, things in books or things on the tv. We really wish she was little more interested in real food.

Speaking of food, I think her favorite "food" is ice. She loves to get ice at both of her grandparents' houses and we have Flavor-Ice at our house (who knows how old it is, I think we got it as a wedding gift) that she begs for all day long. When we are out at restaurants we can usually get her to eat more food by bribing her with ice. "If you take a bite of chicken, you can have a piece of ice." I have also started making her smoothies for breakfast in the mornings and she likes those as well.

As far as potty training goes... let's just say that Elmo and Baby Stella are doing much better than Madeline.

We tried to go without a diaper all Friday morning. We had 0 peepees in the potty and 3 accidents in the floor. So, we will keep trying.


Madeline has also been very obsessed with bird poop lately. She can barely walk to the car without pointing to every white spot on the ground and saying, "poop". Which seems to be a lot!


One more random thing, she really likes things that beep. She loves to push the buttons on our keys to make the car alarm go off. She likes for Andrew to hold her up and push the smoke alarm button. She also says, "beep beep" when she is backing up or if we are closing a door like the refrigerator. (She seems to walk around backwards a lot lately which is kind of funny to watch.)

Madeline has also been very giggly these past few months. She loves to be chased and tickled. And she loves to bounce around on our shoulders. It is so sweet to hear her little girl laughs. It is so fun to get to know her more and more as time keeps ticking. Each stage of her life has been so much fun and so rewarding. We love our little Madeline!