18, no 19 months old now!

So I did skip out on posting about Reese last month with pics and all, but it was busy and I'm ok with that as I'm sure you all are too. You just like to see pics, but I still do it because for me it's an easier way to journal and write about her accomplishments and fun things she can do now. So this post will probably be double long, just so you know. I will just start from the beginning of July and tell you all about the things she's been doing since then.

-She has a mouth full of teeth! It was a torturous time there for awhile, but we got through it and now she has 16 teeth! Well 3 of the 4 molars just barely broke the skin, but still the girl has chompers! Only 4 teeth left before she has all of her teeth! For awhile there we lived on tylenol, teething tablets every night, and the one and only otter pops, or as Reese calls them, "pop"!

-She started talking so much more. At her last speech appointment Reese dazzled us all by saying all her words and even saying "ba, ba Annie" to the speech therapist when we left! It was so cute. She tries to copy us all the time by saying the first syllable to a word and just drops the rest of it off, but I love that we can communicate with her more and more. Here are the words she's got down: ball, car (every time she sees one), pool (sounds like pull), bike (bawk), no (she actually says her n's now), gokey (drink), go, two, three, but she won't say one, park (pawk), walk, shoe (soo), house (how and sometimes howf), dog (gog), cat (ca), shirt (shir), bye bye (ba ba), yo yo, hi, mama, dada, Reese (ray), baby (ba), key (ka), milk, cheese (chay), cracker (cak), hair (har), i love you (a you), bubbles, ELMO (emo), big bird (ba bir), please (pa pa), thank you (a koo), more (ma-ore), grandpa (pa), grandma (bawk or ga), up (uh-pa), all done (a duh), all gone (a guh), night night (nigh nigh), berry berry (ba ba), binky (bick), help (hep and she says this all the time, it's so cute), toe, toy, book and others but these are her main ones that she mostly says. Needless to say the speech worked, or she just was waiting on her own time to start talking.

-She loves to walk all by herself without help. If you tell her danger she'll usually hold your hand then.

-She loves to climb stairs and onto things. She loves the slides and goes down them by herself. She like doing this more than the swings now.

-She loves to go to the park and if we say it before we're ready to go we're in trouble. Same with the pool. (Any body of water to her is called a pool by the way). Even the river is a pool.

-She loves oatmeal for breakfast and bananas and strawberries. She also loves to eat deli meat with cheese and crackers for lunch. She can't get enough pretzels and loves candy (gummy worms and black licorice and wintergreen lifesavers). If I give her a half of a life saver, she's happy as can be. She likes watermelon more now. She still loves her veggies and loved eating them raw from grandma's garden. She'd take whole cucumbers, zucchini, or green beans and just bite out of them. She loves ketchup and ranch, too which gets her to eat more of her hamburger, hot dog or veggies. She's a really good eater still and is completely on whole milk and loving it. She even eats cold cereal with milk for breakfast some days, too. She's getting better at using utensils, but when she's stuck (almost always) she says, "help (hep, hep)!" Then we help her out. It's very cute.

-She loves to brush her teeth and is really good going to bed if I put her down. She hates having dad put her to bed, so it just doesn't really happen anymore. She has a melt down. I hope that will get better.

-She did great in nursery until the last few weeks. She would ball if someone wouldn't stay in there with her. Luckily last week she only cried for a few minutes and then was fine.

-She LOVES to read and will happily read to herself all day long or be read to all day long. She blows through books and I love it.

-She is starting to like dolls more. Yesterday she took out the changing pad and laid it beneath her doll, took one of her own diapers and tried to change her diaper. Then I saw her taking her doll's hands and making them into a diamond for the part of the song in Twinkle, Twinkle when it says, "like a diamond in the sky" as she sang it to her. Cutest thing EVER!

-She's singing more words to her songs. She's a proficient Popcorn Popper and Wheels on the Bus singer. She loves singing and does the clean up song, too. She also loves the She Wolf song by Shakira and says, "aaaawooooo".

-She loves to dance all the time as well, and we love to see it. All you have to say is, "Reese, shake your booty!" and she does! She was a great dancer at Adam and Annie's wedding. The best part was her dancing all on her own with Adam.

-She loves to follow me around the house and be a helper. She tries to help with laundry and brings me things when I ask. She is obedient and always smiling.

-She says hi to everyone that she can.

-She says hi to her phone that she holds backwards up to her ear and walks around. She just loves to mimic us. She even tries to stuff the phone in her pocket and whenever we get to the store she has to hold the keys and carry them around. She even knows how to drive. We put her in the driver seat once and she knew to shift, put the turn signal on, steer and put the key in. It's a little scary! We better watch ourselves.

-She sleeps really well. She goes down at 8:30pm and gets up around 8am. She takes a nap at about 12:30pm and sleeps for about 2 hours. I love it!

-She still loves to play with my hair and I like it, too!

-She is obsessed with Elmo. She is always saying it and looking for him. Anywhere we go she spots Elmo and she can find it, no matter how small it may be. We were in a grocery store with Mal and Jon and Reese found Elmo on the bottom shelf on this tiny frozen food thing. We could barely even see it. It was crazy. She thinks that when I turn the tv on it's because she gets to watch Elmo, sometimes yes and sometimes no.

-She sits for a show for longer now. She watches Sesame street the longest, but can't do it the whole time. I like that, though because I know she's interested in other things and keeps herself busy by reading.

-She loves to read magazines and especially the Friend. She always finds Jesus, cars, houses, dogs, balls and pools.

-She's just content and so happy. She's my little buddy and we have a lot of fun together. We have a lot of dance parties, and singing parties. Life is good!