18 Months!

18 months is such a fun age! At 18 months, McKinley is saying new words everyday, playing and enjoying herself, and developing quite the personality!

Here are McKinley's 18-month stats:
Weight- 25 lbs 15 oz. (72nd %)
Height- 33 in. (84th %)
Head- 51 cm (99th %... still)

And now, for some fun stories about McKinley at 18 months:

• She is starting to really play with her toys, and is even becoming quite possessive of them! Her favorite toys are her cupcake purse, which she carries all of her little people around in. When we leave to go somewhere, sometimes she'll bring her purse along with us just like me :) She also still loves her babies and is starting to love balls! Her favorite thing to do with balls is to throw them all into her crib, then get into her crib and throw them out one at a time! This game could entertain her for hours!
  
  
  
  
  

• She still loves Barney, but is expanding her horizons a little and is starting to really like another show called "Super Why". She knows how to unlock my ipad, go to the netflix app, and start watching Barney or Super Why. It's quite hilarious she knows how to do all of that at only 18 months! There's no telling all she'll know how to do at age 18!

• She talks all the time now and can say almost anything she wants to say! Sometimes her words are only understood by me, but they're words none the less! It seems like she learns a new word everyday. One of her favorite words these days is no, unfortunately! I guess that naturally comes with being a toddler. She makes us laugh when she does or touches something she's no supposed to and says, "No, no, no, no!" It doesn't stop her, but at least she knows she's not supposed to!

• She started going to nursery at church and is not too fond of Mom & Dad leaving her. When I go to pick her up she always has tear stained eyes and says, "Momma, momma, momma!" Poor girl, hopefully she'll get used to it soon and start to love it!
  

• She loves to look at pictures of herself and says, "Ninley" (her version of Kinley) when she sees them! She'll point to pictures of her on the wall and say "Ninley!"'

• She is starting to love the park! Now that it's been a little warmer around here, we've been able to take her a few times, along with a few indoor playgrounds around. She loves going down slides and says, "wee!" while she slides down! She doesn't have much fear and will go down some pretty big slides to my surprise!

• She loves to dance and does a cute dance that I call her Nazi march dance. She get so excited when the Barney or Super Why songs start playing that she dances!

I love my goofball!

Lastly, here are a few more pictures of my sweet lady! Most of them are from her 18 month pictures that I love of her!

17 months

McKinley is almost a year and a half old! At 17 months, McKinley is more full of energy and life than ever and is constantly making us laugh and smile!

She loves to climb on EVERYTHING! Unfortunately, her new love for climbing has led to a few new bumps and bruises along the way. She is very adventurous, has no fear and is a tough little bugger! She is in her element when she's climbing and exploring!

Some of McKinley's favorite places to go are to the park to play, the child watch at the YMCA, story time at the library, and The Children's Museum! She loves to play and be around other kids!

Now that she's a little older and able to play a little more she loves going to the Children's Museum. She loves playing with all of the fun toys in the toddler room, carrying around the puppies at the vet's office, playing in the water at the water tables, and playing in the grocery store pushing around the shopping cart and picking up food.

One day, in the grocery store area, McKinley was pushing around the shopping cart and I was helping her pick out food to put in it. I'd put some food in the cart and she'd immediately throw it out. She put a sausage link in her cart and kept it in there. She started to put more and more sausage links in her cart. If I put anyother type of food in her cart she'd throw it away. I guess she only wanted to buy sausage that day! Me and a couple with their daughter in the grocery store area were cracking up at her little personality!

But, McKinley's favorite place to be is with her cousins Mya and Madison! She gets so excited when she see's them and start to squeal a high-pitched squeal (I think she got this from Mya, because that's what Mya does when she sees McKinley too). When she sees Madison she goes up to her and says, "Hi" over and over. She loves to give them both hugs and says, "Aww..." while she's hugging them. Her and Mya like to play together and enjoy being around each other. It's fun to have cousins who live so close and that we get to see regularly for them to be such great friends!

She is such a sweetheart and likes to snuggle with me every once in a while! I love my snuggles and take full advantage of them when I get them! When we sing the "I love you" song from Barney, she goes around giving everyone in the room a hug and saying, "Aww.." while she's hugging us.

McKinley is finally getting some hair in, but it isn't coming in evenly all around her head! It's long over her ears and getting long in the back, but still short on top! So to try and fix it, I put it in pig tails over her ears (since that's where most of her hair is). I think it turned out quite cute, and is a solution to making her crazy, growing her look presentable.

As McKinley becomes more of a toddler, she is becoming a pickier eater! Luckily her favorites foods are fruits, so at least she likes to eat healthy when she does want to eat! Her favorite fruits to eat are bananas, apples, oranges and strawberries! Something she's being doing at her high chair lately is throwing her food off on to the floor. When we see her about to throw the food on to the floor we say no and shake our heads at her. So now she'll hold the food off of her high chair about to drop her food on to the floor and shake her head no, but still drop it anyway!! Little stinker!

One more funny store about McKinley is about her blue sailboat pacifier pictured above! At my baby shower, my friend thought I was having a boy, so she made me some super-cute boy themed pacifier clips complete with boy pacifiers to go with them :) Over the last 17 months, every other pacifier we've given McKinley has been lost! Even the pacifiers that are newer have been lost along the way, but this sailboat pacifier has been there since day one, and it's the only one that we've held on to! All her cute girly one are long gone!! Probably about 5 or 6 times I've left the pacifier somewhere, or it's been lost in the house or the car, but without fail someone finds it for me or it magically shows up! So we joke about her boy sailboat pacifier that can't be lost!

Lastly, here is a picture of my sweet family out bowling on family date night :)

16 months!

My baby girl is 16 months old now!! As we like to call her she is our little toddler! And a toddler she definitely is! Complete with a new found independence, climbing on everything, throwing tantrums when things don't go her way, and learning new things and new words everyday! She's like a little sponge, it's so amazing the things she picks up on!!

At 16 months old, McKinley is becoming quite the talker! The words she can say are mama (for me and travis), ba (bite), nana (banana), wawa (water), mah (barney), book, ball, ma (more), duck, fish, cheese, gramma (grandma), grapa (grandpa), snow, tree, shoe, baba (the love bug and blankey she sleeps with at night), mah (her cousins mya and madison), bye, hi, milk, juice, woah, uh-oh (she says this when she drops something, sometimes she says it before she drops something and she thinks its quite funny). I'm sure there's more but this is all I can think of now! It seems like she learns a new word everyday! Today's word was snow, since we finally got some more snow and it's been quite cold here in Nebraska!

McKinley is quite the sweet heart! She loves to snuggle with me, which I love! She also loves to blow kisses! Whenever I tell her to say bye, she starts blowing kisses! Above is a picture of her doing this! She is still obsessed with Barney and she loves the "I Love You" song. If we ever sing it she'll go around and give everyone a hug and even a kiss if you're lucky. She'll kiss you right on the lips and make a smacking noise as she does it! It's quite cute! She'll also give her babies or stuffed animals kisses the same way if you ask her to!

She loves to climb in and out of things. She loves boxes for that reason! For Christmas, we should've just gotten her a bunch of boxes! She also loves to put things in boxes and take them out one at a time!

For Christmas, she got a shopping cart that she loves to push around and fill up and empty with the play food we got her to put inside it! She also is a great helper at cleaning up her mess when it's time. I start singing the "Clean Up" song and she starts to put all of the food back in her cart or all of her toys back in her toy box. She's such a good helper!

She loves to play games, like her momma :) Some of her favorite games to play are "where's McKinley" (that's what she's playing in the picture above), "I'm gonna get you" where I chase her around and tickle her, "where's your nose" in which she points to her nose then to the person whoever is asking's nose, and "what does a .... say?", in which she responds with the appropriate noise for the animal we just said. Her repertoire includes: sheep-baa, cow-moo, horse-neigh, puppy-woof, kitty-meow, fish-"kissy face", lion/bear/tiger-rawr, elephant-"blowing noise", monkey- "ee, ee", snake- "sss" and duck-quack. Her favorite noise to make is a rawr noise and makes it quite frequently! It's so cute!

Her recent development is that she has become quite the climber! She climbs on and off of the couches all day. She loves climbing on tables and climbing on the bed. The next thing that I'm not looking forward to is learning to climb out of her crib! Hopefully it'll take her a little while to learn this!

She also is still getting into EVERYTHING! Now even more so that she's getting taller and can climb! There's only a few places in our apartment we can put things so she won't get a hold of them! It's right in the center of a table or the back of a counter! She's got quite the reach on her!

She loves all things electronic! She can navigate her way around on my ipad and iphone! She also loves to pretend like she's talking on the phone. She'll say "Hi" and then babble and at the end say "bye" while she has the phone up to her ear. But, if she ever has a real person on the phone she freezes up, gets silent and just smiles!

Here she is at the library at her favorite station, the computers! I can hardly keep her off of them when we're at the library! I think we have a computer whiz in our future! She still loves to read books! She loves to sit and look at books and especially loves to have me or Travis read books to her. It's amazing how she memorizes what is in the books we read her. In an animal noises book we read her, she memorized what animal noise came next. And we've been reading her a book about Grandpa and today I caught her flipping through the book saying "grapa"! She always impresses me with her quickness!

She also thinks its so funny when she coughs and smiles the whole time. When she's done coughing, she fakes coughs because likes it so much. If she ever hears someone else cough, she starts fake coughing too!

To end with, here's a cute picture of McKinley in her new winter coat since it's winter around here!