how old is she?

My attempts at capturing Elsie's personality.

1. Showing me to tiniest things she notices, like fuzz on her hands. 

2. Being cute and hugging stuffed animals.

3. Using sign language. I think she was trying to say "daddy".

4. Being really distracted by technology such that she simply stares at the camera. 

 5. More snuggling stuffed animals and big smiles :)

6. Dropping to the floor at any time to lay down for a 3-second rest.

7. Climbing up into the chair in her room and asking for books. Or "boo boos", as she says. 

 8. Reading "boo boos".

9. Standing up on chairs. Not all chairs that she stands up on are this safe.

10. "Oh!"

11. Giggles.

12. Pointing to koala's nose.

13. Trying to rip off koala's nose.

14. Standing on anything.

15. Being cute.

16. Climbing on everything.

 17. Playing with her iPad.

18. Closing (and opening) doors.

Elsie

16 months

--Her favorite foods right now are blackberries and cream of wheat, and she will usually eat scrambled eggs like a mad woman. She tried to shove them in her ears once--perhaps in attempts to get even more eggs inside of her.

--Her vocabulary includes daddy, doggie, bubble, boots, kitty, apple, diaper, icky, uh-oh, all done, and night-night (usually said while squeezing her eyes shut). AND.... "No".

--Elsie's signing vocabulary includes: tree, cookie, bath, baby, bike, fire, food, kitty, bird, shoes, potty, bear, milk, hat, all done, more, book, food, doll, ball, sleep, coat, please and thank you. You can pretty much teach her a new sign each day, so she basically knows daddy, mommy, doggie, and pig, too.

--Elsie LOVES to go outside. She is kind of like a puppy--if I just say "outside", she will go look for her boots, coat, and hat, and go knock on the door.

--She also has started making little "ruff" noises like a dog, but not in response to "What does a dog say?" She will only make dog noises out of her own free will and choice, not on command.

--Elsie started Kindermusik! It usually takes her quite a while to warm up, but by the time we are leaving, she is usually running around the room screaming :) 

--She has gotten really great at cleaning up her toys, which is wonderful, since she loves making messes. One of her favorite things is to spill a whole deck of cards out on the floor and then either throw them in the air, swim around in them, or start gathering them up and putting them back in the box.

--Her fourth bottom tooth has just started to make it's appearance--bringing her to a whole 6 teeth now!

--She is a super pro at using her own spoon. Any by super pro, I mean she still gets really messy...and the walls really messy, too, sometimes. Especially if she doesn't like what I'm feeding her.

--She loves when you throw things up high in the air. She can't quite watch it fast enough for its whole path, so generally she'll just keep her neck craned back and wait for you to throw it again so she can see if way up high.

--Aaron taught her how to log roll. That's pretty awesome.

--Maybe you noticed in the list above that she learned the sign for "cookie". That was thanks to Kindermusik--she learned it right away, and then shortly after happened to be Valentine's Day...there were cookies around the house...one thing lead to another and now she thinks she can ask for cookies whenever she wants. And I guess she can ask...