18 MONTHS!

Olive is now officially 18 months old! It is sad that my baby is not a baby anymore, but I am excited that she can now go to Nursery at church...!

Things she has picked up on lately:

• She loves to give hugs and will often say "hugs?" to let us know she wants to give us one
• She will also pucker up and give kisses
• She still likes to cuddle - even with Shade
• She has picked up using the word welcome, although she uses it instead of thank you sometimes. But she says "gelcome."
• Whenever she hears the front door open, she runs toward it yelling "daddy!" Sometimes she is disappointed that it is just me or Shade, but will often still run and give us a hug anyway.
• She finally started calling me mommy. She never really had to say my name before because I was always just here with her. She picked up on "daddy" really quickly because I would always tell her to go give daddy hugs or that daddy was home. So I referred to him as daddy a lot in front of her. I never really referred to myself as mommy :)
• She is getting pretty good at naming animals and animal sounds. Some of my favorites is she says "bi-it" for ribbit, "boo" for moo, and she will snort for a pig sound.
• She is still working on her abc's, but she loves to sit down and learn them. Whenever I have a hard time getting her to follow me in the door I will say "Olive, do you want to do alphabet?" Then she will get a big smile on her face and say "albet!" and come running in after me. She often calls it "Ah, B, C's" for ABC's. But she is starting to figure out individual letters. Sometimes at the store or around the house she will notice letters and name them (especially A, B, C, E, H, I, L, M, O, P, Q, R, S, T, W and X).
• She is picking up words really fast. For example, when we went to Chuck E. Cheese for Shade's birthday, she saw the pizza and kept saying "pizza! Pizza!" She can also say Shade's name (Sade) and many parts of her body, especially her face.
• She also copies sentences pretty well instead of just saying the main word or idea, and is starting to use them in the correct way. A lot of the time throughout the day, she will walk around saying "where's Sade? Where's daddy?"
• She is working on 4 more teeth, which will make it 16 total.
• She really likes to sing and dance. She will often run around singing "Let it gooooo... let it goooo..." from the movie Frozen. She also tries to sing Twinkle, Twinkle and ABC's, but she will usually say other words to the same rhythm as the songs. 
• Her favorite show to watch (when I need a break) is Word World. She calls it "wuh-wood." She could probably sit there and watch that show all day if I let her.
• She can count to 5 every time now. It took her awhile to remember what came after 4.
• She will say "re-y, set, go" for ready, set, go
• When I started walking Shade to school, I would push her in the umbrella stroller we have. Then she would try to push it around our apartment when we got home. But she kept running into things and getting frustrated that it would get stuck. So I remembered a little pink toy stroller Kellen's sister gave us awhile back and pulled it out for her. And she loves that thing! She will put her dolls and stuffed animals in it and push them around the apartment. And it doesn't get stuck as often :)
• She can do slides by herself now (although her shoes will slow her down on the fast ones).
• She is definitely our moody child. That girl can be difficult to console!

But she really is a sweetheart. And she's getting so smart and pretty and loving. She also loves to point out babies and loves to give her toys loves. It looks like she will be a great big sister. We are so lucky to have her cute little face in our family! We sure love that girl! Again, I'm the luckiest mommy in the world!