18 Months

Happy First-and-a-Half Birthday! As usual this month has been filled with firsts, as well as lots of laughs and lots of tears. One day this month you started calling me Mommy instead of Mama, and you haven't turned back. And boy, do you love saying it now. It's become your sort of all-purpose generic distress call: Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Even if I'm actually right there with you. You're usually not actually calling out for me, it's just your way of telling us that you're freaking out. Duly noted.



You are talking. So. Much. I keep meaning to sit down and try to tally up all the words you have now, because I think it's somewhere in the kajillion range. You're not entirely understandable to most people, though, and we often serve as your interpretors. And you clam up in front of new people now, too. Or even people you know but don't see every day, like the grandparents. It takes you a little while to warm up and talk and play instead of tucking in your chin and giving your shy little smile. You'll bury your head in our legs when we're out in public and people talk to you. You don't really act scared or distressed, but you do your new little coy routine. And it's so cute that it just sucks people in more, so I guess you really do have us all figured out, you little master manipulator.



This was the Month of DVDs. For a few weeks, you were obsessed. For too many days I had songs from The Wiggles (I don't know what possessed me to buy it or why you like it, but you get thoroughly entranced by those morons) or Free to be You and Me (this one I am thrilled that you love, as it's one of my childhood favorites. You call it "babies" because of the Mel Brooks and Marlo Thomas baby puppets) stuck in my head for hours on end at work. Every morning when we were getting ready for work and daycare, every afternoon, every night after dinner. You would beg and plead to watch one of your videos, and unlike the good ol' days when we could just grab whichever one we wanted, you developed OPINIONS. Like with your bedtime books, each day there are new favorites and new ones which you simply will not tolerate, and they of course change constantly. Though it can be challenging and frustrating for us, it's wonderful that you can very clearly communicate your desires to us now. It saves us all lots of tears. But just when we started to feel a little bit bad about encouraging your DVD crack habit and feared you were becoming a full-on junkie, you just sort of forgot about it one day and went back to playing instead of watching DVDs.



Almost every time that people with children ask us how old you are, and we tell them 18 months, they exclaim "Oh, I love that age!" And I can see why. It is just so fun. You are just so fun. It amazes Daddy and me that there's room enough inside us for all the love we feel for you.

Love,
Mommy