18 Months

Lily turned 18 months old yesterday. My sweet girl is growing so fast! This year is definitely going by quicker than the first. She can repeat almost every word we ask her to and can count to 10. She thinks she can sing her ABC's, but it is really just jibberish - haha! She loves to sing. She sings happy birthday which to her goes "happy for you, happy for you..." and Jesus loves me, which goes "Jesus loves me, Jesus loves you..." She loves anything musical. We let her watch the Sprout channel sometimes, and her favorite show is the Wiglgles. She is very much a little parrot. These are out conversations: Me - "Do you want to go to school?" Lily - "Go school!" Me - "Do you want to play with your friends?" Lily - "Play friends!" And so on....

One of her biggest accomplishments lately has been learning to ask for help. She always whined at us when she wanted something, but now that she can talk, we taught her to say "help" when she wants something from us.

In other progress, I think we may be on the way to potty training, but not quite yet. She knows terms for everything, and knows the purpose of the bathroom and the potty. She has started to wake up from naps dry, but this isn't something I really want to push. I would rather wait until she is really ready instead of making potty training a months long process.

We have been learning a lot as parents, too, about discipline. We realized we were letting her slide by and giving in a lot to her whims and tantrums, so we had to reasses and nip that in the bud. We don't believe in public discipline, so there have been several trips to the bathroom when we are out and about for spankings. We are trying to follow the book "Shepherding a Child's Heart", but she was about 3 months when we read it. Sometimes we don't realize the mistakes we are making until we are already in the habit of it, but hopefully we are recognizing them all. Might be time to re-read the book!

Lily has her 18 months pictures taken at the beach by the amazing Alison Beyer Ostheimer. I am posting a whole bunch of them, but considering there were nearly 300 and Alison is so talented, it's a miracle I was able to cut it down to only the ones below!