18 months (July 9, 2011)

It was quite difficult to get photos of Raelyn sitting in the chair. She is constantly on the go and when I have a camera in hand she would prefer to see the display instead of posing.

She will sit still to read though. The girl LOVES her books! The one you see above is a current favorite and we read it everyday before nap time. She really enjoys all of her books. Raelyn is constantly pulling out her books to look through. This may play a role in her fascination with words. She points at every picture in her books and looks at us to say the word. We now ask her to point to the picture of certain words. “Raelyn, do you see the bunny? Point to the bunny.” She is great at this game!

Like I said, Raelyn is usually go, go, going! She enjoys dancing, twirling, running, being chased, etc, etc.  Here she is twirling (the photo is blurry, but you get the idea).

Raelyn “talks” all day long but it’s her own language. She still says daddy and mama and on occasion she’ll throw out a duck. We think that she’ll explode with words once she is ready. She definitely understands everything we say. I can name any one of her toys and she’ll go get the right one. When we play with her blocks we can say, “Can you find the bee, bzzzz?” And she can find every block that has the picture of the bee. It doesn’t matter if the bee is face up or face down she knows every side of that block. During her bedtime prayers I’ve always drawn out the word amen at the end. Something like, “Aaaaaamen.” She has started saying amen (“men”) after I do. I love it! 

She makes this face that I call the crinkly nose face. She does it when she knows she’s being funny or doing something cute. Sometimes she does it because she’s done something she isn’t supposed to and knows the face melts my heart. At least I think she knows. When the photographer was here for Max’s newborn photos she caught the crinkly nose face on camera!

Can you hardly stand it?

She is just so fun right now. She holds our hands to lead us from one room to the other. She gives the best bear hugs. She loves forehead kisses. She stomps her feet when she is mad or isn’t getting her way. She is just the perfect little 18 month old girl!

And her eyes…

…her eyes. Oh how we love this girl!