18 months!

Today my sweet little girl is 1 1/2. This picture totally describes her personality. Fun, silly and full of life!! She is such a joy to me and I can't belive how much she is changing! She makes me laugh constantly and I can say that I really enjoy her company! Every day I feel like she can communicate with me more and more and that is so nice. I know I will probably say this at every stage-but this stage is my favorite so far! There are definitely days when I'll be looking at baby pictures of her and get sad that she's not a baby anymore, but this stage is just so much fun. Here's some things about Ella at 18 months.

*She's a pretty good eater. She'll try anything once. Now that she's completely off dairy, I'm having to introduce new things and that's been a little tricky. She LOVED mac & cheese which now she can't have unless I make it with soy cheese. A typical breakfast for her is soy yogurt with toast or waffles. Lunch is usually some sort of lunch meat or turkey hot dog with fruit and then dinner is just whatever we're having. She really likes spaghetti and this girl loves bread and carbs! She also really likes graham crackers and teddy grahams, which is her normal snack. She used to eat lots of goldfish crackers but now she can't have that because of the cheese. I need to be better about giving her veggies. She doesn't like veggies very well so I try to hide them in with other things when she eats. Sometimes she'll have butternut squash with hot dogs all mixed together. Sounds gross but she loves it!

*She's back to 2 naps a day. I'm gonna stretch the 2 naps out for as long as possible! We went to 1 nap for awhile but it just wasn't working-she was getting tired by around 10:30 or 11 and then would only sleep an hour and wouldn't take a 2nd nap. So now we do a morning nap at around 9:30 and afternoon nap around 3. She goes to bed around 7:45 and is up usually around 6:30.

*Her favorite activity right now is drawing! She also loves to go outside and just RUN! We've gone to this inflatable jump place called Monkey Joe's a few times lately and she really enjoys that. She also loves being at the Children's Museum. Her favorite shows to watch are Agent Oso, Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse Club House. Whenever I get my laptop out she runs over and says "Hot Dog!!" so I can play the Hot Dog song for her on youtube :)

*She is a total mommy's girl, although she definitely loves her daddy. She's had quite a bit of daddy time lately and I can tell she's much more attached to him than she used to be. She also is starting to recognize people more that she doesn't see very often.

*Her vocabulary grows daily and she's putting more words together (all done, all gone, i get you, let's go, etc.). she still hasn't said "I love you" and I can't wait for her to learn that one!

*She still isn't thrilled about bath time but we've seen some improvement. She's still in her infant tub. I'm thinking the issue was part fear of the water and part pain in her ears. As her ears have started getting better, her fear of baths has decreased. We're not too worried about it right now.

*I bought her a potty chair this week. I don't think she's at all ready to be potty trained but I just wanted to introduce it to her. We practiced sitting on it a few times but she just didn't get it-but she does like sitting on it!

*EAR UPDATE!! I took her to her pediatrician this week for an ear check. The chiropractor had said to get her checked after 2 weeks to make sure there was no infection and that the fluid hadn't increased. After looking in her ears, the dr. said one ear was slightly pink but nothing that she would even prescribe an antibiotic for. She said both ears still contained fluid but that was totally normaly. She said fluid can stay in their ears for up to 3 months after an ear infection. I was a little worried about how my pediatrician would react to the fact that I'd gone the natural route and not done tubes. She was actually very supportive of it! She said that as long as her hearing was fine (which it is-we had that tested) she saw no reason for tubes at this time. She said to continue what we've been doing and she would continue to check Ella's ears. She said that in May we should just schedule an appointment with the ENT to do a pressure test and make sure that everything was back to normal. So, we're continuing to just give this to God and pray that her ears will heal and not require tubes! We've seen a HUGE improvement in her disposition in the past few weeks that I can only assume is because she's starting to feel better!

Well, for anyone who's still reading this long post, thanks for reading and being interested! :) It's a joy to share our life with you!