Happy 18 Months Peanut!

My "baby" girl is 18 months old today. It's so cheesy to say but it really does go so fast. She is this whole little person and is no longer any part "baby." But what a wonderful little girl she is growing into. I wish I could somehow save every moment of every day with her so that when she is a horrific teenager (and I have NO doubt that she will be every ounce horrific) I can look back on this time and remind myself why I decided to keep her. But for now, I will just try and capture of few things that she's doing and some of her favorite things.

First the stats: She is 22 lbs and 8 oz. She is 31.75 inches tall and that puts her in the 25th percentile for weight and the 50th percentile (!!!) for height. She remains true to her nickname; she is a little peanut. She was charming as all getup for all the ladies in the office and even for the doctor as long as he wasn't trying to, you know, examine her or anything. She screamed bloody murder while she was being weighed and measured and then during her exam, but as soon as those things were over and I was chatting with the doctor she ran around the office and counted to 10 and sang her ABC's and just when he was asking me if she was using two word phrases she marched over to me and said, "Mommy, no want it. I want to go bye bye." He smiled and looked at me and said, "Umm...yeah, I think she's good on the speech front."

Wow. Never heard THOSE words spoken to me before.

She wants so bad to be a big girl. She eats whatever we are eating for dinner every night and she insists on using a fork and spoon (even though half the time she is making more of a mess than not). She constantly asks me to "brush her teeth," but I put that in quotes because what that really means is she wants to stand on the stool big brother uses when he brushes his teeth and she wants me to put water on the tooth brush so she can suck it off and hand it back to me and say, "Again? Busha da teef again?" She wants to try and put her own shoes and clothes on. She wants to brush her own hair. If I give her my hand to try and help her up or down some stairs she knocks my hand away and finds a wall or something to hang onto and makes do herself. Very independent she is.

She has found her voice in more ways than one. She can certainly communicate with you but she can also DEMAND. She announces in the morning that she wants to watch a certain TV show and then 10 minutes later has melt down when she has decided that she no longer wants THAT particular TV show and would prefer another. For the record, she is finally into TV and her favorite shows right now are Cat in the Hat, Caillou, and Super Why. She also enjoys Curious George, but I think that is mostly because it's her brother's favorite show. But the other three are the ones she asks for.

As I have blogged about before, she not only wants music on in the car, but it has to be her choice of music and she wants the song changed as soon as she deems it over even if that happens to be 15 seconds after she initially cheered "Hooray!" for the song that came on. She has learned to ask her brother for help on things. She walks up to him and hands him something and says, "Bruh-der help?" And if he ignores her (which he quite often does), she follows him around going, "Bruh-der...bruh-der...bruh-der?" until he finally gives in. She has figured out how to use him to her advantage.

Last weekend she came up to me and said, "[her name] take baby for walk?" I looked at her a little confused because she has never asked that before and I repeated, "You want to take your baby for a walk?" She nodded and said, "Yeah." And then she walked over to her stroller and put her baby inside it and said, "Let's go!" I was completely amused by this whole concept and got her brother and we went outside and she proceeded to walk down the street pushing her baby in the stroller all the way around our entire block. When she gets an idea in her head she goes ALL for it.

She is also a little obsessed with books and those wooden puzzles. She loves them. And I don't know if she has just memorized them all at this point or if she is just damn good at puzzles. Her brother was never really into them but she LOVES them. She has about 10 of them and she picks them up and dumps them onto the floor and then sits down and picks up each piece and knows exactly where it goes and puts it right into the correct spot and moves on. She can complete an entire puzzle in about 20 seconds. It's a little bit insane.

As I have blogged about ad nauseum on here, when my marriage broke up when the boy was little I was devastated for many reasons. But the one that stuck after all the therapy and after a good portion of the healing was that I didn't feel like my family was complete. I was scared to death to do it on my own, but I just didn't feel like The Boy and I were all that was needed to make our little family. And I couldn't have been more right. About two and a half years after I started this blog saying, "I am single and I think I need to have another child" I was right to trust my gut. I needed this child. She is such a huge part of this family and I can't even imagine life without her. She really has completed us. And not only that she has brought such joy and happiness into both of our lives that I simply can't express it properly.

And I will end on what happened in my living room tonight. You know when you have one of those magic moments where the sun and the moon and the stars all line up and you have one of those glorious moments as a parent where you think to yourself, "THIS. This right here is why I did it. This is why I do it. For moments like these..." Well I had one of those tonight. Peanut got three vaccinations today and a flu shot. So by about 7:00 this evening she was a mess. She had a fever and she was shaking from being cold (just out of the bath) and she had spent the past 20 minutes sitting on my lap under her blanket rocking on the rocking chair and warming up (unheard of for her). I put her down because she had finally agreed to have her night time milk so she was sitting in her chair and I went into the kitchen to make her milk. Her brother went over to her and squatted down next to her and said very softly, "I'm sorry you're not feeling well. Shots are a bummer, but you'll feel better soon..." and then he bent down and kissed her on her hand. She smiled at him and he sat next to her and patted her leg. Then after I had given her her milk and she was drinking it he went back into his room and got out his coveted blocks (that are only shared with her when he is feeling VERY generous) and brought them out and made a tower right in front of where she was sitting. Then he said, "Here you go Peanut, I made you a tower...go ahead and knock it over..." She didn't cause she felt so crummy and he said, "You want me to knock it over for you?" She nodded and he crashed it down in front of her." She smiled and sat up. He built it again for her and said, "How about now?" She grinned, threw off the blanket and stood up and knocked it over. He clapped for her and said, "See? That's what I wanted for you to do. I knew my blocks could make you feel better..."

Could you just freaking die?