17 Months

I thought I would devote a post to Maddie and the cute things she does. She is almost 1 1/2 years old! She is understanding more of what we say and will usually do what we ask her to do... well, as long as she wants to :) We are learning about toddler discipline right now! She continues to love her naps at home and often will say "nigh nigh" to me and walk to her room way before it is actually time for her nap. She continues to prefer saying "this" and pointing to things instead of learning their names. Hopefully this will change soon. She did surprise us the other night by actually answering me with a definitive "yes" and nod of the head when I asked her if she wanted to eat what I was holding in my hand. She hasn't said it again but I know it is in there now! Other than that, she babbles unintelligible words and tries to converse with us which is just so cute. I don't have any pictures of her with her "baby brother" doll but she really likes it and will hold it like a baby and pat its back and put its pacifier in the mouth. She does poke it in the eye a lot which we will have to watch out for when the real baby brother gets here! She has become very social with strangers and will say "Hi. Hi. Hi." to random male gardeners outside and people in the grocery store. However, usually when an adult initiates the interaction, she becomes a bit shy and doesn't "perform" for me. Enjoy the pictures! The text goes with the picture above it incase it isn't very obvious.

In case you forgot what she looked like without her glasses, here is a picture of her in her favorite frog towel. We are so thankful for her glasses and that she can see well with them. There haven't been any changes in her vision yet but the glasses do straighten out her eyes and we definitely see a difference when she wears them.

She has curly hair! This is after a bath and a lot of times, she wakes up with it crazy like this.
Here she is "playing restaurant". This is something she observed an older child doing and now she always likes to do it when we go to the park. She puts piles of bark on the ledge and then hands it to us.
She really likes click pens (and we try to keep them away from her due to her drawing on our furniture and walls). Here she is demonstrating how to attack a piano with a click pen.
Showing off her long awaited klash Kurdish shoes from Iraq. She has some room to grow before she can walk in them without falling though :) See www.preemptivelove.org
You don't know how excited I was to get her hair into a tiny ponytail. Believe it or not, I have done pig tails as well!

Maddie is finally big enough to play on the playground (but with a lot of supervision). She crawls up the stairs and can now go down the slide by herself. She loves interacting with the other kids that she meets and copies what they do.

One of Maddie's favorite things to pretend is talking on the phone. She picks up rectangular objects and hold them up to her ear and says "Hi" and then laughs at herself. Here she is using a graham cracker.