Anne's Long Awaited 18 Month Update

Well, I'm finally sitting down to do Anne's 18 month update. Phew! Anne has changed so much in the past few months it is amazing. Some of her milestones happened so slowly that I couldn't notice a change in her (when exactly did she go from tipping over to sitting for a few seconds to full fledged sitting?), but some of them have been so dramatic that I can't help but notice a change in her. That's what I feel like for her personality the past few months.

Verbally Anne is a star. Although she isn't at quite the same level of some of her super advanced friends, she is doing great with communication. She says 20-30 words and comes up with the cutest little things that we repeat with her over and over ("Anne, who loves you?" "Mommy, Daddy and Ducky." "Anne what do we say to the doggie?" "No, no WeWe" (that's how she says Winnnie.)) She has just started to be able to think before she speaks. This is new in the past few days that now occasionally she can remember to say please as she's asking for something rather than whine 3x and then w/ a reminder say please. We are still working on other advanced forms of communication, such as if I go downstairs ahead of her, she will start to cry and whine because now she wants me to pick her up and carry her. We are working on having her ask me to "Down please" rather than whine but it is quite a difficult concept for her. She is good about knowing how to ask for other things though: eat, juice, water, ducky, Elmo, outside among others.

Physically, Anne is doing a lot of fun things here too. Just in the past few weeks she has started to attempt jumping. It is so cute! She will do some deep knee bends then stand up quickly from one and that's her jump. About half the time she'll get some sort of air, even though it's usually more of a skip or a fall with only one foot getting off the ground, but once or twice, she's jumped with both feet off the ground. She's starting to attempt going up the stairs standing rather than crawling now too. This is exciting for me, because it is a developmental milestone. I'm pretty sure most of the kids her age can do this, but I don't think it's a concern for her quite yet. The main problem here is just that she is so short it makes the stairs that much taller. She runs and walks great and is starting to climb too.

Anne loves to read lately. That is her most favorite activity. Pretty much 75% of the toys she pulls out are books and she'll walk over to you with it, turn around and then back up into your lap for a story. It's adorable. She has just started to actually let us read the books too, which is a great sigh of relief for me. Before she would sit, down, flip one or two pages, throw a temper tantrum if you tried to stay on one page to read for more than one word then would get up and get a new book. Now she is able to sit through most stories. Probably 50% of them she sits through and listens; the other 50% she does her tantrum thing if you try and read it. (And actually most of those stories are Bible stories...uh oh.)

Anne has been really clingy the past month or so but the past few weeks it's been really "bad" (although, I don't view it as bad.) It is so bad that most of the time, even if it's just the two of us in the house, I cannot leave her sight without her crying and not stopping until I return. She wants to be held whenever my attention is elsewhere too. During dinner, while I'm cooking, mostly. Fortunately she loves, loves loves to sit on the counter and play with the drying Tupperware while I cook. I like having her next to me while I do this. And it's sweet that she wants to be held during other things too. Whenever she sees a stranger, she immediately points back to me and says "Mommy". Sort of like "That's my mom, she's here, so don't try anything fishy."

In general, Anne's a great girl. Probably our biggest struggle is eating. Most days I can handle it as long as she eats a bite or two, but occasionally I lose it and get so frustrated with her for not eating. When Daddy is home, he is the one who feeds her just because I get so annoyed by it. But like I said, she's a great girl. She has a sweet personality, loves to laugh, and is very independent. The changes in her in just a few months are amazing.