Leah 19 Months Old

Something amazing happened this month ...Leah is officially posing for pictures!! Leah JoAnn currently weighs 25 pounds and is 34 inches tall. She is wearing mostly size 12-18 month, but she is starting to wear some 18-24 month. She is in size 6 shoes and size 3 diapers.

Leah is gradually picking up new words although the most common words out of her mouth are uh oh, momma, dada, and no. She now calls for our cat Lucky and even says his name right. She has picked up two 2-word phrases - "No. Mine!" (Usually when stealing some sort of electronic device) and "More Please!" (For food or her Halloween candy... accompanied with the sign language for please) We had a first last night at story time before bedtime. She has a first words book with pictures of everyday items. On one page, there is a picture of an apple. I pointed to it and said, "Apple" and she said "Apple" back... Several times!!! This is the first time she has tried a new word repeating it after me! She has been trying to tell me things that seem very important to her, but she has yet to find the words for it so I just hear very urgent nonsensical talk. I love hearing her little voice!

Leah is very observant and is making connections daily. She is an absolute sponge right now and it is so much fun! One day I was in the other room and the microwave started beeping. Leah ran in ahead of me and when I finally arrived in the kitchen, she was standing pointing at the microwave with an oven mitt that she had taken out and put on. 

Leah is becoming quite the independent eater. Even if she is starving, she refuses to be spoonfed by me. This makes eating time rather messy especially when yogurt is involved. She is a pretty good eater and tries almost everything that I cook, but she has decided that she doesn't like potatoes at all... amd that includes French fries and my tasty potato soup. :( Luckily, she is still a champ at eating her vegetables, so I don't have to worry too much. She's also good at eating her Halloween candy.

Helping is one of Leah's favorite things to do these days. She helps feed the cats and the fish on a daily basis usually being the one to initiate if she thinks that the kitties are particularly hungry. She helps to load and unload the dishwasher. (I almost have her trained on how to put the silverware in!) She runs to the washer or dryer when they make their finishing sounds and insists on moving the clothes over or into the basket. If there is a piece of trash on the floor, she will throw it away when asked. (As you will see in the video though, I have to keep an eye on her when she is being helpful. Haha!) 

At nursery, Leah is still the youngest, but does her best to keep up with the tons of three year old boys. (This should make the dating scene interesting in our ward one day.) She loves music time and likes doing the motions to all of the songs. She always ends, "Head, shoulders, knees, and toes" like this... At least she knows where her nose is? (Oh wait, guess I don't need to worry about boys with this picture. Hahahaha!)

Leah's favorite place to play right now is definitely in the fridge. Any opportunity she gets, she is in there reorganizing, snacking, or just playing. One day, she was left alone for a short amount of time and she took most of the stuff out of the fridge and placed it on the edge of the counter.

Or this time when she reorganized my eggs without breaking a single one!

Leah's favorite thing to do still is basically to make a mess. It seems like every time I turn around, she has "reorganized" another cabinet, drawer, bin, etc. She helps to clean it up sometimes, but honestly it is a stage that I'm hoping she finishes with soon. I just want her to play with all of the TOYS she has!!! Grandma H. was the recipient of some delightful reorganization as you can see below.

We've gotten into a pretty good schedule lately. She wakes up around 7am each morning. Now that it is cold, I usually grab her and bring her into bed with me for some cuddles, but she usually just wants to play with my iPad. We eat a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage, Cherrios, and a banana between 7:30 and 8am. She plays pretty well around the house while I clean up after breakfast. We're usually out the door by 9:30 for the library or a local play date. She gets lots of social time and then we are back home by 1pm for nap time which lasts until around 4/4:30. At that point, I'm getting dinner together and we're eating by about 5ish. We usually watch a tv show and play around a little bit until bath time at 7pm. She likes to play in the tub for a while, but throws the soap at me when she is ready to finish up. We do lots of story time, fishy feeding time, brush our teeth, and then she's in bed by 8pm. I'm still nursing her about 3-4 times a day (usually at wake up and before nap time and bedtime).

Leah knows her schedule and will "remind" me of the next thing that we usually do. At night time after she is in her jammies, I usually say, "It's time to brush our teeth!" and Leah will run out the door toward my bathroom. I usually hang her bath towel up in her bathroom as we are passing by. She usually just runs straight to my bathroom, but the other night she ran first into her bathroom and pointed at the towel rack for me to hang up her towel. Haha, thanks for the reminder. She is very observant!

Earlier in October, we took the opportunity one Saturday morning to go to a local pumpkin patch as a family. Leah had some difficulty navigating the vines sticking up everywhere, but she was able to eventually choose the "perfect" carving pumpkin. She did great on the tractor ride and even successfully took a selfie with my DSLR.

Luckily, Leah was napping during the majority of the pumpkin carving this year, but she enjoyed playing with the guts afterwards and kissing the finished pumpkins.

Halloween was a lot of fun this year! Leah was a black kitty because kitties are basically her favorite thing in the world! The costume was a simple Pinterest idea and I especially like how her tail turned out!

In the week prior to Halloween, Leah was able to wear her costume FOUR different times. The first night we put on the costume was for my parents' ward trunk or treat. Her first experience trunk or treating it took a little while for her to understand what to do, but she was a pro by the end of the night. Her Grandpa S. from Utah was actually here visiting and was able to take her around a little bit. (This is unfortunately the best picture I got all night. It has Grandpa S. helping Leah and Grandma H. passing at candy.)

She also got to wear her kitty costume twice at the library that week and once at a local play date. Group shots with toddlers in costume are always interesting.

By the time it was actually ready for Trick or Treating, we were experts at getting Leah into her costume. She started out the evening a little shy, but by the end of the night she had no problem just walking up to a house and grabbing candy directly out of their bowl. She was so cute in her costume that she actually got away with grabbing 3 full size candy bars at one house. She was all business and lasted the whole two and a half hours of trick or treating. She has quite the collection of candy that we're still working on.

Even though it is November, we have been lucky enough to have some really nice days in the 60's. Leah loves being outside, so we definitely took advantage of that time. Mommy picked up some ride-on toys for outside for sweet deals on the Facebook Yard sale site... One of which was an awesome pink tricycle which actually had to stay in the house for the first couple of weeks because Leah wanted to ride it all the time and thought I was returning it to the owner whenever I would bring it outside.

The other ride-on toy is more of a ride IN toy. I picked up a cheap cozy coupe and decided that I would redo it after Pinterest interfered with my simple idea to buy new decal stickers. Leah loves climbing in her daddy's S2000 and honking the horn and such, so I decided to copy daddy's car. The results were even better than anticipated and Leah loves her new car!

This little girl is SO much fun and we have a great time together!