19 months!

Our sweet little McKinley is 19 months old, and we couldn't love her anymore!! At 19 months, her vocabulary is ever expanding, the list is probably too long to write out every word on here!

She loves getting out of the house and going places. Recently, she's loved going to the park and seeing the slides and the swings. Every time I ask her if she wants to go to the park she says, "slide, swing"!

Another one of her favorite things to do is throw balls down the staircase at our apartment. She laughs and always tries to bring a ball with her every time we leave the house. She has even mastered the art of walking up a staircase without crawling and holding on the railing to chase after her ball and throw it down the next set of stairs. She loves balls so much, she even sleeps with them in the car :)

Her 3 best friends are of course her cousins Mya and Madison, and her new friend Zoe. McKinley has a lot of fun playing with them when she gets the chance to! She can say all of their names and gets so excited and even starts jumping up and down and dancing when I tell her we're going to see one of them!

She is definitely very busy, and doesn't sit still for very long! But every once and a while throughout the day she'll take the time to stop and snuggle with me or Travis (usually while she's watching Barney) we love those moments and enjoy them while they last!

No surprise that she still loves Barney and all things electronic! She knows she can access Barney on our ipad, TV, and iphones and she tries to watch it every chance she gets! She is so good at using the ipad and our iphones it's kind of scary, haha! Here she is asking to play with my ipad, and sitting in her cow chair watching Barney on the ipad holder in our kitchen.

We've really been enjoying spring around here! We've loved all the time we've been able to spend outside, and cooling off on a hot spring day with some frozen yogurt and cousins!

A few other random pictures I have are of our little leprechaun on St. Patrick's Day and McKinley spending some quality time with her Daddy :)

It seems like all I post about these days is McKinley. That's because she's the one that does all the cute stuff! But as for an update on and me and Travis...

Travis stays very busy going to school full time and working full time at Home Depot. In his free time he plays basketball and spends time with me and McKinley!

I've been keeping busy chasing my crazy little girl around! I've also been training for a half marathon in April.... Yikes, I know! I've been using a 12-week training program and I'm on week 6 now, halfway there! The closer it gets and the longer my training runs are the more my confidence grows and the more I feel like I can actually run 13 miles!

That's about it that's going on around here! We're looking forward to the spring and to the warmer weather! We're especially looking forward to summertime and having Travis around more!

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 :)