Ellie: 17 Months

17 months seems like such a random ago to start, and oh my gosh, how do I start?!?!  I started this post last Tuesday, preparing for her to turn 17 months on Wednesday, but these posts are proving to take me a while as a beginner :)

First of all, I must say that I love this age.  Ellie is of course still a baby in so many ways (well she always will be my baby, but you know what I mean, right?), but on the other hand, she is a playful, busy, chatty little girl transforming more and more into a toddler every single day.  She mastered walking once and for all right around 15 months, and ever since she checked that off her list, she is onto her next big developmental task- talking!  Now I know these developmental milestones do not happen in isolation, but it really does seem like 15 months was a huge transition point for Ellie---she took off walking, dropped her last night-time feeding and was finished nursing once and for all (pat myself on the back...I never thought I would make it that long!), dropped the 1-2 bottles a day of whole milk, and began the 6 week long transition to dropping her morning nap and going to 1 nap a day....oh yeah, and started talking our ears off!  She really seems to learn a new word almost every day, which is SO fun as a parent (Wow. Parent? That word still catches me off guard every time. I am pretty used to being "mama", but something about the word parent jolts me a little!)  It really just amazes me and brings me so much joy every day to hear her clearly say words in her sweet little voice that enable her to actually communicate with us mixed in with series of jibberish that are clearly not jibberish to her :)  What a privilege to raise our sweet angel.  I am so very, very thankful.

Tid bits from 17 months:

• Ellie went on her 1st family bike ride!  I got a bike with a baby seat for my birthday, which is seriously a child hood fantasy of mine.  This was (and still is) a HUGE hit.  We went shopping for a new special "hat", and we came home with a Winnie the Pooh helmet.  She immediately learned to say "bike" in the cutest little accent possible, and she loves the wind blowing in her face.  Every time we leave or enter the house through the garage, she points out the bikes and says "bike, bike, bike, bike...", you get the idea :) 
  
  
  
• Ellie has always loved to be tickled, but recently she learned to say "tickle, tickle, tickle" in the same way her Daddy always does it to her!  She says it when we tickle her, and she also enjoys to tickle herself and her babies!
• Ellie loves being in the water and points out every body of water calling it a "pool".  We visited the splash pad several times this month, and she got more and more brave every time.  Now, she wanders all over the splash pad filling up buckets, bringing them back to show mama, and enjoying toting them around spilling water all over the place.  She seems more independent in this setting than any other, walking around with little care of where I am being surrounded by strangers and lots of big kids---that's really neat to see from a girly who may normally be described as a clingy.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On the note of "pools", one day after grocery shopping, she so quietly snunk into her baby pool at home while I was unloading groceries in the kitchen.  She played with all her water toys squeaking around in her wet shoes and soaking wet clothes for an hour and a half with the biggest smile on her face.  I asked her several times if she wanted to change clothes or get her bathing suit on, but she very adamantly shook her head and told me "no", haha :) 
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Picking up the phone in her play house saying "hi"

• We got to go on a few fun boat rides with Ashley and David, the Hutcheson and Slatery crews, and the Panella and Moneyhun crews.  Ellie loved riding on the boats and even went on her first tube ride with her friend Hensley and respective parents---super exciting!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ellie has never been a baby that you could really rock to sleep or drive around so she falls asleep.  Since she was 6 months old, we have laid her down awake in her crib, and she puts herself to sleep (eventually).  Well, one night over at Megan in Jims on our trip to PA (blog post coming soon!), it got really late, but we failed to bring all over her goodies to get her to sleep (sound machine, bunny, video monitor.)  We thought it was worth a try, so we put her in Megan's pack-n-play with a regular monitor on her.  Well, that didn't quite work out.  She screamed her head off for several minutes before Pop-Pop came to the rescue and offered to go rock her to sleep.  We sent him off and said "good luck" saying "that won't ever happen."  Pop-Pop is an amazing grandfather and definitely has a special touch.  Needless to say, he was able to rock and sing Ellie to sleep in a couple of minutes.  We came into the house whispering that it was time to head back to his house, so he gingerly stood up from the glider trying to be super careful not to wake Ellie.  He leaned forward a little too far, and the whole glider slipped out from under him, and he crashed to the floor!  Ellie woke up from a dead sleep and said, "Whoa!"  Not a fuss, not a tear, just a "whoa" :)  We were all 3 cracking up.  This is one of her new favorite words.  She says it in the car when you go over a bump, go around a sharp curve, or stop or accelerate too fast.  Hilarious.  
• Ellie has a new fascination with her diaper and all bathroom-related activities.  Several of her new words fall into this category: diaper, poop, bath, shower, and trash.  She thinks every time we sit on the potty, it means we are going #2.  When we stopped at Wendy's on our trip back to TN, she was in the stall with me pointing into the potty repeating, "Mama, poop? Mama, poop? Mama, poop?" over and over again very loudly....oh boy!  I guess I should have known all modesty is out-the-door the day you get pregnant!
• This month, Ellie learned to say a lot of family members names, which has been really exciting!  Dada, Mama, and Darla were some of her first words.  Now she can also say Ashes (for Aunt Ashley), Nana (for my mom), Papa (for my step-dad Papa Jay), Daisy (their dog), Pop (for Pop-Pop), and she is pretty close at saying all 3 of her PA aunts names, Jill, Megan, and Amy.  She has also affectionately named her bunny that she is super attached to, "night night".
• Some of her favorite activities: all of her water toys (especially her cupcake set), drawing on her magnadoodle and playing pictionary naming what we attempt to draw, playing with her babies, playing play-doh, reading books, playing with her dishes while we cook/clean in the kitchen, and learning to feed herself with a fork and her own bowl/plate instead of eating right off the tray (BIG deal right now, let me tell ya!)

I could go on and on, but I think that's a good stopping point that pretty well describes that current happenings of Miss Ellie.  I just couldn't love her more.