Alicia at 16 months

Our little girl turned 16 months on Thursday.  It is incredible how much she has matured over the past couple of months.  Her speech and walking have developed well and she now has all 16 of her baby teeth.  She is beginning to like girly things.  She hugs and feeds her babies bottles and she LOVES jewlery.  The more beads and bracelets, the better.  She spends most days with 6-8 beads draped around her neck and her favorite hot pink bracelet on her arm.  We will have to learn how to color coordinate later ; )  But on the other hand, she also goes crazy for jets, tractors and trains - especially trains lately.  So she's a well rounded little girl!

She is talking very well.  I understand most of what she says, but I also know her "language".   She shortens a lot of words like "by" for butterfly and "bay" for bracelet.  Other words she says backwards - she calls Eeyore "O-E" unless she hears you speak his name first then he is "E-O".   She used to say cup as "puk" but lately has learned to say it correctly.  She thinks the word "you" is attached to verbs.  She asks me to "holdyou" or "helpyou".  I guess that comes from me asking, "Do you want Mommy to hold you?" (or help you?)  Also, she knows how to say poopie and booger - somehow those words always sound the loudest in public.   We were in the library two weeks ago and she started hollering "diaper! diaper!" and pulling on her diaper - over and over again while I was trying to quickly check out.  Yep, she wanted to be changed, and everyone in the library knew it before we could get out the door!

Right after she learned to walk well I taught her stop, go, stay and come.  It only took 2 days of maybe 3-5 minutes of walking down the sidewalk practicing and she got it.  For over a month she was so obedient also - and very pleased with herself when she did what I asked.  So being the proud mom, I am thinking "Wow, my daughter is a genius AND so obedient!"  Well, about a week or so ago she realized that when I ask her to stay she could go and when I ask her to come she could turn the other way and run.  So we are in new territory now and are trying to teach her that it isn't a game.

She still loves to dance and to look at pictures of herself and other babies.  Here is Alicia kicked back looking at a picture book of herself which was a gift from Gma and Gdad.