Elise is 18 month old ⇒
Well, the down-side of not keeping monthly reports on Elise anymore is that now I have a huge entry to write. I'll try to be as brief as possible but Elise is so funny these days it's worth putting it all down. Make yourself comfortable.
At 18 months old, Elise is becoming quite an amazing little girl. She still looks like a baby to me but I think that's because of her hair. It's getting quite long and thick in the back but still not much action on the sides. I recently took her to the doctor for her well baby check-up and she is 82 cm tall and 11 kg. That puts her at 75th percentile in height and 50th for weight. Tall and lean like her Grandpa (well, and me, I suppose, being the tallest person in my family). She meets all the 18 month milestones. My doctor says she's as cute as ever and I'm sure I'll never forget that she once told me Elise is the cutest baby she has as a patient. Maybe she says that to everyone but I'll take it!
I predict that Elise will one day join the circus. She is an adrenaline junkie thanks 100% to her father. He tosses her, swings her, flips her over. She can even do a front roll all by herself. She climbs endlessly with utter confidence. The other parents at the YMCA toddler drop in laugh at her climbing all over the equipment and barely holding our hands to jump off. She climbs up, puts her hands behind her head and says "Ta-da!!" Then she counts one two three wooooooo! when she is about to jump off so you better be ready to catch her. She loves to be put off balance. I would find it so annoying being knocked about the way Erin does but she laughs. She loves to play chase and pinches her fingers together to indicate that we are supposed to catch her. Erin and Elise play hide and seek--Erin hides then scares the bejeezus (as he says) out of her when she finds him.
To show off her femine side, she loves shoes. She got some shoes with little squeakers in them from the Leske's for her birthday (gee thanks guys!) and she loves them. She also likes to wear "fancy" clothes like little pinafore dresses and this great outfit that Mavis' friend Kathy Stauffer bought her. FYI Kathy is the lady who buys the clothes that you think "Who would buy that for their child?" She likes to have what little hair she has put in a little pigtail on top of her head (Andrea at her daycare started that) and she loves having her hair dried with the dryer after bath.
Some of her more unusual forms of entertainment include playing with wash cloths. She lays them out and picks them up--she'll play with them for about a half an hour at a time. She also likes to sit in boxes, play with my icing tips and cookie cutters, taking out the tupperware lids and putting the little bear in Dressy BEssy's pocket over and over again saying "where's bear?" and zipping up the pocket. She is great at zippers now. She loves anything that involves dexterity--shape sorters, building towers putting small things in holes.
She still loves eating--her daycare swears she has hollow legs and can't believe she's not fat. She has a pretty big breakfast of baby cereal, yogurt and Fruitsations then she has a nother HUGE bowl of cereal at daycare. Our dinner leftovers, cut up fresh fruit (like a whole pear for example), cheese, crackers, deli meat, yogurt, and cottage cheese go with her to daycare and the lunch bag comes back empty every day. She eats the same as us for dinner then has a bowl of cereal or some other snack at bedtime only an hour or so after dinner. She is starving when she wakes up.
She is starting to talk more. She still does her sign language. She got up to 30 signs and I've stopped because I want her to start speaking now. She never just says words, she exclaims them. She can say Mama, Papa, Mapa (grampa) Nana (doubles as Nana and Anna-the lady who runs the day-care) bear, the other one (a-yaya), crayons (yayas), paper, food, more, milk, cow, chicken, cereal, yogurt, chair, bath, dog, horsey, shoes, crackers (tata), hippo, purple, up please and yeah. Most of these words aren't exactly clear and unless you know the context you probably wouldn't understand her but she is getting much better and clearer all the time. She'll try to repeat any word you say to her as well. She also knows lots of animal sounds: moo, cockadoodledoo (cockooooo!), bock bock bock, quack, roar, and my personal favourite "fff-fff" for dogs. What cracks me up the most is that she says more complicated words than easy ones. She says purple but not red and blue. She is trying very hard to say octopus (??) and umbrella.
She is a very agreeable little girl in general. Occassionally she launches into what we call the "no-no dance" where instead of shaking her head, she shakes she whole body from side to side. We're trying to get her to say "no thank you" but truthfully the no-no dance is so funny I don't want it to go away too soon! She sleeps well and everyone comments on her big smile that she wears all the time.
I can't wait to see what she thinks of being a big sister.