Lucy at Eighteen Months Old

It came down to working out, reading, napping, or writing this blog. Blog, feel honored.

Today, my little Lucy is eighteen months old. I'm celebrating the big event by posting cute pictures of her, posting a video of her playing t-ball, listing her words (I did this for Isaac at 18 months and it was fun) and talking a little about my Princess Lucy.

Her words and phrases: dada, mama, sock ("ock"), dog, hi, pretty "(pree"), paci (pa), "here go" (for "here ya go"), apple, Elmo, milk, eye, baby, "where go?", go, yeah, squirrel ("quill"), hop, uh-oh, cookie ("coke"), color, more, car, "rock, rock", yogurt ("yog"), shoe, show, up, ball, poo-poo, coat, there, hippo, elephant ("ella"), chair, duck, no, Isaac, bear, blankie, peek-a-boo, Jesus, frog, hot dog, fish, slide, brush, cow, bird, pig, chick, horse, .

Isaac had 100 words at eighteen months and Lucy's got a generous *52 (I forgot some of her words when I counted before--and I want to stop counting her words for the rest of my life:)). I think this is partly because Isaac so dearly treasured his animal books at this age and loved to call out the names of every animal he knew. Lucy uses her limited words often, particularly as she asks me all day where her daddy is.

She is a Daddy's girl in a huge way. For the past several months, both Doug and I (and everyone else she loves) have been Mama. So I would get her in the morning and she'd ask, "Where Mama?" and she meant Doug. We both knew it. Thankfully, a few days ago, she finally began calling Doug Dada and we're thrilled for different reasons. He no longer has the embarrassing nickname and I want to be her only Mama in the world. So horray for everyone. Now she'll ask, "Where Dada go?" and it makes me happy. But she'll ask ALL DAY long.

More about Lucy: Her first year seemed really happy and busy. She slept through the night pretty early on and didn't get sick very often. In November, she got sick for the first time and she hasn't really been healthy since then. Still, the little girl has a lot going for her. She loves to tickle her brother and color; she used to love reading books and I hope she'll get back into that; she is a champion cuddler; she is very brave on slides and in parks; she climbs right up on anyone's lap (and will probably call them Mama); she loves to dance to the music on my CD player, or to the refrigerator magnet animal farm toy we have--whatever. She loves to play the piano, and she's pretty good at cleaning up. She likes to sing "Clean Up, Clean, Up" but it's all pretty jumbled. She loves songs with actions, and gets me to sing every time I change her diaper. She'll be going to nursery for the first time on Sunday (if I'm okay leaving her there--I don't want any sick kids to get her sick because the steroid she is taking weakens her immune system).

We love her, we're happy we have her, and, based on our circumstances, we are just grateful that we haven't had to admit her to the hospital yet. She's our precious girl.