Niamh turned 18 months old yesterday. I missed doing a long, tribute esc, note on other milestone months but I think she is fairy well recorded given the nearly 10,000 pictures I have (only a 10th get to flickr) and all the posts over the past 18 months included her a little bit. Anyway, this one is entirely dedicated to Niamh.
At 18 months old you have mastered a lot of physical things, you walk, run, climb and even balance pretty well. Fortunately you have kept your monkey climbing to times we are around playground equipment except for the few times you have climbed out of your crib. You stand on your toes and stretch to reach things and don’t fall over for no reason all that often anymore. You love to slide, even the biggest slides, and you love to swing. You also love balls and can throw them pretty well now.
You are slowly learning how to speak but you definitely know how to communicate. Your favorite word right now is a tie between ‘no’ and ‘baby’. For the record you declined a BMW and a million dollars. We are hopefully you learn the word yes soon but when you want something you either repeat it, make happy noises or you make the noise associated with the action. If I ask if you want a drink you make a sipping/slurping sound and if I ask if you want hot or cold and you want hot you make a blowing noise. I have to listen carefully sometimes because if I’m drinking a glass of water and you make sipping noises and I don’t notice you get unhappy. You are still using your signs too, please, more, thank you, fish etc it makes it a lot easier to keep you happy when you can let us know what you want. You understand a lot of what we say and can follow directions pretty well. You surprise us with your knowledge of what something must mean given its context like scooch forward must mean move forward and you do it. Pretty soon we need to start being careful about talking too much in front of you.
You have a lot of favorite activities these days. Anything to do with art you like, coloring, painting, and playdough are all big hits. You also like to help me cook and clean and are even helpful now when you help. You really like the bath, especially bubbles, but you still hate having your hair washed, but that does not stop you from running to the tub yelling ‘bubbles’ every night. To keep you busy while the tub fills I ask you to bring your dirty clothing to the laundry basket and in the past week you have been doing it before I say anything. I have no idea how long this will last but it is a nice help. You also put away toys and crayons when we ask (most of the time). You love outside and walks and the park and just running around on the deck. We play games and race and you have fun playing with us, and sometimes, you have fun playing without us! You love all music, even heavy metal, but you love the song ‘move it move it’ most. You like to push all the music toys on the fridge together to make a really big noise but then you dance to it and have a great time.
Sleeping and eating are some of the things that matter most for growing past 2 feet tall and you are doing pretty well on both. Yesterday you slept from 7pm to 7am without a peep. Usually you only make it to 5:30 or 6 but maybe this is a new trend. You go to sleep with a minimal routine of washing, then changing, then a book, then goodnights, then bed. You have started to give up the nummies on your own and only really eat first thing in the morning. Over the past few weeks you have given up on the after school snack and the big change is weekends, where you used to want more just because I was around now you are ok with just once. You still insist sometimes when you are feeling sick or tired but 90% of the time now you will pass it up for real food. You eat basically anything we give you. You love humus and guacamole and salsa and ketchup. You love your baby food puffs and yogurt bites and especially the baby cheese puffs and you love goldfish crackers and granola bars. You will always eat pizza, any pasta, red sauce, or hotdog and depending on mood many other meats. You like cheese and broccoli and you love peas and actually request them. You can keep most of your food on your tray and we are working on keeping it on a plate on your tray. You have mastered the spoon and the sippy and are actually very good with a cup or a straw except when you get tired of a drink you are still likely to pitch it overboard so we mostly stick with lids. You do ok eating out with us even though you tend to end up sitting on my lap eating off my plate but you don’t misbehave otherwise. There are too many foods you eat that I can’t list them all and I can’t think of many things you don’t like although sometimes you won’t eat something you liked another time but that is pretty normal.
The last think I will mention is your sense of humor. You are getting very good at making jokes and acting silly. You love to pretend to give us something then take it away at the last second. You laugh like crazy when you find us when we play hide and seek. Your not great at looking but you are great at remembering all the places we hid in the past and just look in each spot until you find us. You know how to get away with stuff with both of us, we need to compare notes so we stay consistent because you can get your dad to give you way more fruit or cookies then I ever give you, he also lets you watch ultimate fighting. You are finally getting over your fear of all new people but it is still best for strangers to treat you like a cat, let you come to them.
I suppose that is the best I can do to describe you at 18months, does not seem like enough really, but the 10,000 pictures and all the video should also help J
Halloween day was a blur of busy, I’m so glad we had help! As always I over fussed about the party but it was a reason to really clean and declutter. Any by declutter I mean all the stuff I didn’t get to got shoved in the back room. I do intend to go through everything as it comes back out and this is reason 2463 why having a party is better then spring cleaning.
We saw it on a tv show and they are getting pretty mainstream and since he works from home, works out as a hobby, and still has the hair to support it we figured why not! It looks really cute in person although I think people may think he is a bit more dangerous. So far the mohawk has equaled free stuff, he got free cheese curds at the pumpkin patch and free wine sample at the liquor store. He figures it is because people want to talk to him and then feel like they should give him something. Or maybe they are scared of him 
He can’t wait to see what daycare thinks – I think he will be disappointed and they won’t say anything but maybe they will. The best part about it is that when people ask why he did it he says ‘because my hot wife asked me to’ I find that a very good answer.
We were very lucky with the weather, it was not overly hot but it was sunny every day.
