India: 18 months = 1.5 years!

Dear India, my sweet, belligerent, stubborn, charming little dollop of girly-whirly delight,

You are now 18 months old, and suddenly you are no longer a baby but a girl!  Look at you! You are big and strong and a force to be reckoned with.

Recently your hair has gotten a lot longer, and lately it's not standing straight up as much. I guess it's a mullet.  I'm going to miss that sticky-uppy hair when it goes away.

First thing in the morning, when we go in to get you, you exclaim, "Mek!" Which is your way of requesting, very kindly and politely, a cup of milk. "Mek!"

You then point to the top of your sleepsack and say, "Naps!" We open the snaps.

Your lack of language skills does not keep you from voicing your OPINIONS. Oh, you have them. You have preferences, and you make them loud and clear.

There are shirts and pants that you will not put on. "No. Nonononononono."

You can't yet explain it's because they're CRUNCHY or whatever it is you might find distasteful, but no matter how cute I tell you they are, they're not going on your body.

Your favorite jacket is neon pink. Basically, you seem to embrace the same strong colors that I do. And it's not because that's all you have to choose from; you have plenty of more subdued hand-me-downs.

These are the words that you now have: Mama, Daddy, Nana, Jordan (pronounced kind of like Darde), shoes (doos!), socks (dock!), window (meeno), moon (mun!), agua, water, ice, clothes, dirty, clean, diaper, up, down, night-night, dark, duck, doggy, book, more, stop, tickle, monster, hiccup (picccup!), help you (hapu!), oatmeal (homu, pretty much like Jordan said it), car, big truck (biituck!), pasta (bata), dirt, hat, walk, button, people, ball, baby, nose, eyes.

The dangerous thing about asking you where your nose is is that you will then point to the other person's nose after yours. And then after nose typically comes eyes, at which point you tend to poke the unsuspecting person right in his or hers.

"Eye!" Poke!

I know you have more words, but these are the ones I can remember. I had forgotten how fun this stage is, with all the new words and the delight with learning and producing them.

You now have 11 teeth - three of them molars. You are definitely not one to suffer in silence, and thus we have all been suffering, particularly in the wee hours of the morning. Molars are brutal.

You looooove your brother, and he loves you back, but he's so torn between enjoying you and being completely, meanly jealous. He takes whatever toy you are playing with, or whines because you have it. He does one thing, you do another, one or both of you cry, sometimes I yell. In other words, lately evenings have kind of sucked for me, and I count the minutes until I can get you both in bed.

But when it's one-on-one with either of you, things are great. And sometimes together you are delightful. When I see you enjoying each other, making each other giggle, it fills my heart so full.

I love you love you love you.

Mama