18 months of JOY!

This is one of "those" posts.

You know the kind.

"I'm really horrible at writing in a baby book, so I'll capture some of it here."

So.... here's to 18 months with our precious Emma. She really is such a delightful child (*except for my birthday, see previous post, which was a horrible twist of fate).

• She loves her "Signing Times" videos. And is able to sign about 30-40 words and speak them. Her favorite video is about the colors and involves rainbows. Ever since viewing the video she has become obsessed with rainbows and sings with GUSTO "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" with Greg and I.
• She loves walking to the mailbox with Daddy at night. She will frequently find Greg in the evening and say, "walk. bail box. peese."
• She still loves shoes and socks. She tries on about 15 pairs a day. But as soon as we get in the car, off go the shoes and her chanting, "wee, wee, wee..."
• Emma also loves glasses and will rip them off of any unsuspecting person who is holding her. Many a stranger at church has had their glasses pulled off by her.
• She LOVES baths and when I pull her out, I wrap her up in her soft towel and cuddle her in my arms like an infant saying "oh... what a sweet baby..." - she has picked up on this, and now when I wrap her in the towel, even before I have begun cuddling, she says "ohhh... baby".

• Emma loves to have lotion put on and now loves to put it on herself. If ever she spies a bottle of lotion ANYWHERE in the house, she cries, "wash, wash, wash" until we give her a little on her hand that she can rub all over her face and legs. Then she promptly returns to us for "more, more, more, wash, peese."
• We sing to her before her naps and bedtime. We sing the same songs every night, so she has started to become quite familiar with them and will sing the last word of each line with forced vibrato and a ton of enthusiasm. She also sings lots of other songs with us and loves the actions that go along. Her favorites are "Wheels on the Bus" and "Itsty Bitsy Spider" - but she knows about a dozen.
• Another "Signing Time" video has airplanes in it, and she has now become a CIA operative in charge of locating planes in the sky. I'm telling you, she has some kind of weird sixth sense and can hear them and see them when they are TEENY WEENY dots in the sky. Many times I won't see the airplane until LONG after she has screamed "pane, pane..."
• She associates adults with their children or pets and will refer to them as such. She calls JJ, Alex. And calls my Aunt Sharron, Maggie (her dog). When she hears my Mom on the phone, she asks for Uncle Glen. She saw her Aunt Tara a few nights ago and called her Taytum. When I was talking to Aunt Gina on the phone, she started screaming, "Anna, Anna".

• When we ask her how old she is, she holds up one finger and says "two"... because she can't get the "counting component" out of her head. When we say, no, you are ONE, she says TWO and is very proud of her accomplishment.
• She can spell her name... sort of. We ask her to spell her name and she says "E...mumble mumble, mumble... A" And then says proudly, "EMMA!" Nice that we chose a short, simple name that makes it easy on her. Next task is her middle name Margaret. hee hee.
• In my family, we play the game "Who Loves ____ ?" followed by "I do". She picked up on this one VERY quickly and LOVES to play. Who loves Daddy? To which she screams, "I do"! Recently, she has started playing on her own when she wakes up in the morning. We will hear.... "mumble, mumble, Kucky.... I do! mumble mumble Grandpa... I do! mumble mumble Mommy... I do!" It is so funny to hear the names she chooses to use in the game.
• She still enjoys Skyping family and screams with delight when she sees people on the computer screen. Such a wonderful invention for staying in touch with long distance family.
• She went into the nursery a few weeks ago. We thought she would go in like a champ because she is such a social butterfly, but she has actually had a difficult time letting us go. Two weeks ago, I had to stay in there the whole time. Last week Greg left her, and she cried for about 5 minutes and was fine. Our nursery leaders are GREAT and I hope that soon she will not have the screaming fits. It's a little embarrassing.

• The fridge ledge is her favorite perch. As soon as the fridge door opens, she comes sprinting into the kitchen, shoves me out of the way and promptly plops down on the fridge. She tries with the freezer as well, but is not as thrilled with this options as it is usually too cold for her.
• As soon as we pull into our neighborhood she yells, "We're Home. We're Home. We're Home"!
• She is our little parakeet and repeats every word our of our mouth. Guess I better watch what comes out of my mouth now. :)

WE LOVE OUR ANGEL EMMA!!!