She's finally 18 months!!

Maddie has finally hit that magical and really fun age of 18 months. Wahoo!! It's magical for us because that means that she is finally old enough to go to nursery!! In our church, the kids get to go into nursery once they're old enough to be away from their parents (they're in there for two of the three meetings-Sacrament Meeting we are all together as families). They're in nursery until they turn three, and then they get to go into Primary classes. So this means that church isn't a complete wrestling match anymore and Ben and I get to actually listen in our classes!! YEAH!!

So here's some updates about our girl. We just took her to her well child checkup today. She is a whooping 19 lbs 11oz (yes, I'm being very sarcastic) and 29.5 inches, just 2 lbs and 2 inches more than at her 12 month. That puts her at the 2nd percentile for weight and 5th percentile for height. Her head is actually at the 64the percentile though (never thought of her as having a big head!). Compared to Parker at his 18 mo checkup, she weighs almost exactly the same, but is 2 inches shorter. She is STILL anemic even with iron vitamins (has been off and on for four of the last six months), but doc says that may just be how she is.

Maddie is such a funny girl. She's got so much spunk and is always doing crazy things around the house. Here's some of the things she loves to do:

She loves to walk around the house with a blanket over her head. I don't know how she doesn't run into things, but she doesn't.

Maddie LOVES blueberries, and pretty much any other kind of fruit. But especially blueberries. She also loves cheese (asks for it ALL the time), and gummies are her favorite treat.

Maddie likes to use things for something it's not usually used for. Just the other day I found her using her beach ball for a bench to sit on to play her little piano.
She always gets the toy basket and dumps it (which I groan at every time she does) and sits in it and plays. Sometimes Parker will push her around in it too (not the wicker one of course), which she loves. She also likes to play under their kid table, and Parker will usually join her under there.
She has somewhat recently learned to pull over her little chair to wherever she needs so that she can get to something she wants. She loves to do this to grab things off the counters, play with the light switches, look out the front window, and peak at what Mom's making for dinner.
Maddie loves baths. Every single time we change her diaper she asks, "Baff? Baff? Baff?"

Maddie loves her brother so much. When she wakes up in the morning or after a nap and comes out and finds Parker, she gets so excited and gives him a hug. She also loves to pretend an injury so that she can say to her brother "Ow, Ow" and he'll kiss her better. It's precious. (here Parker is kissing her "injured" hand)

But at the same time, Maddie is also quite the sass. She just love love loves to pester her brother to death. I think it's her way of getting him to pay more attention to her. An example of how she pesters is when they're sitting on the chair together (which they both love to do), she'll just reach over and put her hand in his face, and she'll start rubbing his face all over, and he'll kind of push it off, and she'll put it right back on, he'll push it off, she'll put it back on, etc. It's actually kind of funny to watch and Parker really takes it like a champ (well, most of the time). He's definitely learned to put up with a lot more than he used to.
Maddie loves is when Parker takes off the cushion of the red chair and they both climb up and "dance" on it (meaning they jump up and down). This also happens a couple of times a day, as it is one of their favorite pass times.

Maddie is also obsessed with walking on her tip-toes and walks like that all over the house..and church.. and in the stores (I get really surprised that her legs don't get tired because of how much she does it!). And she loves to go places...any place besides our house...and several times throughout the day she will go and get her shoes, stand by the door, and say "Go? Go? Go!!" and reach for the door.Maddie loves playing outside. Not only does she go to the door and ask "Go?" several times throughout the day, but she also tries to run to the backyard every time we go into the garage to get into the car. She'll grab an outside toy, go stand by the garage door and wait patiently. If we open the garage door before we've gotten her into the car (we quickly learned not to do that) then she would run out and head for the back yard where the swing set and slide are. She still puts up a little bit of a fight when we put her in her car seat instead of going out back, but she's gotten a little better.

She loves the slide, but the swings are her favorite

Maddie likes to make a mess, especially when it comes to eating. About half of the time that she eats, her food ends up in her hair and all over her face. This is not because she hasn't mastered a spoon but because she inevitably ends up ditching the spoon so that she can squish the food in her fingers, rub it on her face, and spread it in her hair. It's loads of fun for her I'm sure, but the clean up sure isn't. :-)

Here she is just from tonight, putting yogurt in her hair, over and over again.

Maddie still only has two of her top front teeth. She has all four of her bottom teeth and she has actually gotten three of her four molars (the fourth one is very close to being out), but we are still waiting for those other two top teeth to come in.

Maddie has gotten to be quite the talker these days and says at least 40 different words. She loves identifying body parts, especially eye brows (which she started saying on her own much to our surprise). She still loves doing animals sounds and besides the basic ones, she loves doing noises for frogs, owls, snakes, donkeys, turkeys, elephants, dinosaurs, and more. She tells me "pee-yew" when she has a dirty diaper, and loves asking for her "nilk" (milk). We've gotten rid of the bottle all together (we used to rock her while she drank a bottle, and then we'd put her down to sleep) and she uses just a sippy cup.

One weird quick about Maddie is what she does when she gets surprised. Most kids/people open their mouth and gasp when they are surprised, right? Well Maddie not only opens her mouth, but sticks her tongue out every time. I don't know why, but she has always done it that way. It startles some people because they think she's sticking her tongue out at them, but really she's just acting surprised. What a funny girl!

She has just grown up so fast and she definitely spices up our lives in so many ways. We just love our little girl to death!