18 Months!

Our little (actually, quite big) girl is officially 18 months old.  It's funny that these milestones come and go and we hardly notice now, when we used to mark the days and weeks since her birth.  However, at 18 months we want to stop for a minute and give thanks for our beautiful, healthy, busy, talkative, sweet girl. 

We don't have Evie's 18-month checkup until next week, so we won't know her official 18-month stats until then.  Looking at her, we can tell she is still a tall and skinny girl, and she has a ton of words.  She is an endless stream of chatter, commentating on all the past/current/future happenings.  

It's both fun and exhausting to spend my days with her, especially when she dumps my coffee on the carpet!  (Don't worry, no one got hurt).  Seriously, I don't cry much, but I almost lost it on Wednesday morning when this incident took place.  I had looked away for a second, and Evie was trying to carry my coffee to me when it poured all over the carpet.  For the rest of the day, she was saying, "Coffee.  Uh oh.  Spot Bot.  New one."  Thank goodness Matt is the master of stain removal, and he was able to get all that coffee out of the carpet and make me a new cup of coffee before I lost my mommy marbles.

We've been doing our best to get out of the house, but as the gray and cold days settle in, it's getting harder and harder.  We bundled up and had some fun at Aunt Pea's house last week, and Evie was brave enough to go down the slide by herself!

The most challenging thing I'm finding is getting all the gear on to go somewhere when it's cold.  Evie doesn't like getting her hat, jacket, mittens, and boots on, so it can be a long process to get out of the house.  I've been trying to get ideas of how parents efficiently get toddlers bundled up and into their car seats since it's unsafe to wear a winter jacket under the car seat buckles.  Clearly the people who made these rules didn't live in a cold-weather state like Vermont!  Fellow parents, please send me any tips you have for making winter transportation less painful.

Back on the home front, Evelyn has become very "helpful" with her meals.  She really wants to use a spoon, and she can almost eat an entire container of yogurt on her own.  Unfortunately, sometimes she gets distracted and paints her face with yogurt, too!

In addition to eating (also one of mommy's favorite passtimes!), Evie currently loves to play with stickers and crayons, read books to her stuffed animals, and play games on the tablet.  We don't let her use the tablet a lot, but it's amazing how quickly she is becoming a little computer geek.  Poor kid!