Corn and Hats

Our 17 month old SPONGE!!!

Our sweet daughter is almost a year and a half. She's growing up so fast and becoming her own little person. Since I've been terrible at journaling for the last . . . while . . . I've decided I HAVE to record some things and milestones about her on the blog!!!

Lucy is just amazing me every day! She LOVES to learn, and she focuses intently when she can tell we're actively trying to teach her something. Once we're slowing down, repeating ourselves, pointing, sounding out letters, acting out motions, etc—Lucy goes into learning mode. You can see it in her face. It's really cool! She's learned so many new words, signs, and concepts lately. Here's a list of many things Lucy knows and can do.  I know I'll forget stuff, so I'll probably update it here and there if I remember anything I left out. :)

• Vocabularly she says or tries to say: Hi!, yeah, dada, mama, what's that, door, cheese, Jesus (sounds a lot like cheese), amen, circle (grl-grl), cracker (Kah!), shoes (shu-shu), blueberry (buburu), avocado (haha! from acagaba to abagacba and many other variations), "R" (her favorite letter), "O" (her second favorite letter sound, though every letter and number is currently R or O), ball, food ("fffffff!"), water ("wa-wa"), gold fish ("ishies!), help ("hup!), all done (she always whispers this, for some reason), no, peekaboo (new as of today)
• Signs for: please, milk, more, food
• Does animal sounds for: lion (rar!), tiger (also rar!), bear (grrr or rar!), horse (she says "Neeee!" and then clicks her tongue haha), dog, cat, sheep, cow, elephant, monkey, snake
• Letter Recognition: Yesterday Sam was reading a "Where's Baby" book with her, and today I watched her pull the book out, open it up to various pages, and every time the word "where" was, she'd point to the big "W" and say "Wh! Wh!" Amazing.
• She frequently points to big letters. She notices symbols more and more now. The other day we were walking into Babies R Us, and she look up at the big store letters and points, exclaiming "R! R!" 
• She RUNS everywhere! She has one speed when were out and about: lightning. She's like a floppy chaotic ping pong ball, and trying to contain her in a store when she's on her own feet is near impossible and often results in tears, haha. She just wants to be free and run run run to the horizon and beyond.
• Music and dancing is another favorite. She loves music and dancing so much! She dances, likes to play on the keyboard, and sometimes hums a little. When others are singing or dancing, she's captivated. And whenever Sam pulls me into the kitchen to dance, Lucy watches enthralled, smiling, laughing, clapping, and usually runs up and asks to be picked up to join in the fun! :)
• She LOVES the park and being outside. She picks dandelions and blows them, then runs up and offers them for us to blow. She likes ladybugs, and has had one crawl around her arm. Lucy has a special love of all flowers. Every time she sees flowers, she points them out excitedly and runs over to them to sniff the petals. 
• Communication and expressing herself: she has really been big into increasing communication with us. If we aren't looking at her, she'll come and grab our faces and turn them to her so we're looking eye to eye. Often she'll say "hi!" in a high-pitched voice. She actively tried to make me laugh and will hold my face so I'm looking at her and then sway side to side super fast and make goofy faces. Once I start laughing she stops and giggles and squeals too. When she's angry or frustrated about something we do, she'll growl and sometimes bite her hand and then point at us (this one is a true self-expression of her anger or frustration, it just came out one day and it's what she does every now and then if she'll really mad).  She also does tantrums, flopping to the ground, sometimes not breathing for a while and turning purple. When she's really happy about something we do or say, or if we guess what she's trying to ask for correctly, she'll scrunch her nose and grin and run up and throw her arms around us in a big hug (I LOVE THIS!).
• Favorite shows: Super Why (all-time fave), Winnie the Pooh, Baby Einstein, sometimes Curious George
• Movies she has seen: to my knowledge the movies she has seen include Finding Nemo, Frozen, Rocket Man (UGH!), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, Enchanted (I fast forwarded the scary parts with Narissa), and half of Air Buddies. She doesn't watch movies often and neither do we. But she loves her shows, especially Super Why. It's her favorite and she asks for it every day haha.
• Favorite songs: Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree (she does ALL the actions with it!), I Am a Child of God, Row Row Row Your Boat, Caspar Babypants songs, and a random little ringtone Sam created with GarageBand on the computer. Whenever it plays she goes nuts, clapping and kicking her feet.
• Favorite foods: Blueberries, grapes, avocado, banana, cheese, raisins, plain white yogurt. Honestly, she's a really great eater, and eats a variety of good foods and snacks. Occasionally she'll be picky, but she never refuses the before-mentioned foods. She also loves black beans, funny enough, and will devour a tray of black beans and rice from costa vida, haha.
• Junk foods she's tried: cake, ice cream, pizza (is it really a junk food, though?), chocolate chips (they were dark!), whipped cream, chicken nuggets, and french fries.
• Favorite toys or "toys": her binkybear, her white and pink puppy, megablocs, balls, and KEYS! Keys are the big one now. She always wants people's keys, and once she has them—good luck getting them back. She knows keys go into locks, and tries very hard to open the mailbox, front door, and car doors when she has keys. She also enjoys anything with a screen, of course, and knows how to swipe to unlock my phone.
• Hairstyles we do in her hair: her hair is still pretty straight and short on top, and long and curly in the back, so we're a little limited still in hairstyles, but we get creative and it's fun. Her mullet is so long that we can do lots of little curly ponytails and piggytails in back. We also do the fountain on top sometimes, and often just leave it down, fro-ey, and free.
• Other random concepts she understands: her bedtime routine, if she's nakie it means bathtime (which she loves), shaking her head often means "no", putting on shoes means going outside, walking past our rose bushes means we're getting in the car and not playing outside (she usually whines or cries a little)
• When we say prayer, she bows her head and clasps her hands together for a few seconds before continuing whatever she was previously doing. Progress. :)
• TEETH: She has 8 teeth fully in, 2 that have cut through, and 2 more that will cut through soon. So before too long she'll be up to 12 teeth.
• Privacy: she likes her privacy sometimes. Every now and then she'll go into her room and close the door. We'll go peek and find her pulling stuff out of drawers, or just sitting and playing with books and toys. She also frequently wants privacy when she's filling her diaper. Sometimes I'll notice, "Hmmm... it's been too quiet for too long." Yep, Lucy's door is shut. I'll peek in and see her around the corner working on a job. If she catches me peeking at her, she'll often look at me like "Excuse me!" and close the door in front of me!

Oh how we love this little ham!!! She brings so much light and joy into our lives! We feel truly blessed to have her in our family. I know she will grow into an amazing person, and will be a great big sister to future siblings.

She is so much like her daddy. :D

Run, Lulu, Run!

Our little lady! So grown up with her ponytail.

Watching our neighbor's little boy William.