Happy 18 months to our big lady!

We LOVE having a 1.5 year old.  Every day is such an exciting adventure!  Jane is always busy.  While at home, Jane loves to create art, play with her big toddler toys, and read books.  Jane also really enjoys going to the zoo and spending time at the park.  

Jane loves to tell stories about things that happen during her day.  She has an AMAZING memory.  She still talks about things that happened in June.  Examples include, seeing a dump truck dump dirt while swinging at the park, getting a starfish and whale face painted on her arm at the aquarium, and seeing a girl who caught a jellyfish on a stick at the park.  More recent favorites include stories about the animals at the zoo...feeding birds, feeding giraffes, elephants getting their feet washed, elephants digging and throwing dirt with their trunks, brown bears drinking water...the list goes on and on!  Her ability to remember and tell the stories is really incredible.  

Jane's language skills continue to develop.  She still doesn't have very many words or even sounds (we will be talking to her pediatrician about this at the end of the week), but she gets along incredibly with her signs.  She has started using 2 or 3 signs or sign-word combinations to talk about or request things. Examples include more (spoken) water (signed), bird swing on top (all signed, the bird was on top of the swing).  Jane also understands simple adjectives like hot/cold and big/small.  Jane can even tell a joke.  What does a bunny eat?  "Hey!"  We saw a bunny at the zoo eating hay; Jane doesn't understand homophones yet so thought this was really funny!  She LOVES this joke.  She tells it herself by twitching her nose like a bunny, saying "hey!", and giggling at her funny joke.  She also enjoys when we ask the question and she answers with the punchline (i.e., "hey"). She is so sweet! 

And now for the biggest change in the past month...JANE SLEEPS BY HERSELF AND THROUGH THE NIGHT!  For the first time ever, Jane has her own rooms, falls asleep in her crib without crying, and sleeps until morning.  This really deserves its own post because our grown up girl was incredible about this change.  I miss snuggling with my baby at night, but we all sleep better this way.  And it is a necessary change with baby brother coming in January.  

Happy 18 months old to our big, SMART girl!