The Hartsell Family: 18 months

Madelyn has learned so much since she was 15 months.

Favorite things to do:

She still loves to say "go" when she goes on the slide, pushes a push toy or is being pushed around in her car. She still loves being pushed around in her car and going down the slide.
She loves her babies and is constantly pushing them around in the stroller, giving them hugs and kisses and even changing their diapers--insisting on using a wipe to wipe the babies' pooh-poos. She has also brushed her babies' teeth and shared her yogurt with them (these were messy affairs!).
She is very bossy. Telling us constantly to sit, get "up" or just yelling mama and dada for us to come.
Madelyn loves music and her Music Together CD and class. She requests "Happy" (If you're happy and you know it) almost every night during dinner and loves when we sing and make up verses. She also likes to request "Rock a Baby" (Rock a Bye Baby) to sing and cuddle to with her babies. Her favorite songs from Music Together are the Hello Song (she always is ready to clap her thighs when this starts) and Crawdad which has lots of references to "up" which she likes to sing along to by saying "up" at just the right times.
She has gotten into dressing up with necklaces and bracelets.
She LOVES her little table and insists on sitting at it for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks! She also insists we come "SIT" with her.
She loves reading books and is even starting to fill in the words for us. For example, we'll read 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed and she'll say "head" at just the right time. She still loves reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear or Baby Bear, Baby Bear (which she calls Mama) and making the animal noises. She also likes finding the dog, cat, bird and teddy in the Usborne Find It books. She still likes watching the lady bugs disappear in 10 Little Lady Bugs.
She loves her play kitchen and playing with her play food. She especially likes her pizza with 6 slices and her 6 cupcakes as well as making vegetable soup. She also likes to pretend sweep with her kid-size broom and dust pan.
She has gotten into art and loves drawing with her crayons and markers as well as playing with stickers.
She loves looking at photos. We have a family photo album for her that she loves pointing to and saying the names. She also loves looking at her class photos. She absolutely loved all the Christmas photo cards we received that were taped to our cabinet.
She is getting more coordinated and likes to skip and jump although she still can't get both feet off the ground at once. She is also able to run and "fly" which is running with her arms up and backwards. She also as mastered her sit-and-spin and loves doing it. She can walk up and down the stairs on her own using the railing. Walking down the basement stairs, she needs to hold our hand because she can't reach the railing.
We recently got her an owl bedding set and put it on the twin bed in her room. She loves cuddling up in her big girl bed and reading books before bed. She is still sleeping in her crib.

Here are some of our favorite memories (in no particular order):

She loves to scare people by "hiding" and then jumping out and saying BOO! She also loves when we reciprocate and scare her by saying BOO!
Many times, we have been stopped a stoplight and hear Madelyn say, "GO!" When we explain we are waiting for the light, she just keeps on insisting that we go until the light finally changes and we do GO!
She loves when we all do things at the same time. For example, if mama is brushing her teeth, then Madelyn wants to also and then insists that Dada also brush his teeth. Or if Madelyn is drinking water, she wants both mama and dada to also drink water at the same time. She also does this with books. She'll pass out books to us and wants all three of us to silently read together.
She imitates us a lot. When Brian was hammering nails into a cabinet, Madelyn came along and picked up the screwdriver and started hammering too. Or she'll see us pushing the shopping cart and will then help push it too.
Whenever she hears a sound, she'll point to her ear and say "hear?" Or if it's a beep that she heard she'll point to her ear and say "BEEP." She also points and says "see" when she wants to go see something.
She is very good at acknowledging when she is making pooh-poos. If we aren't around, she'll come over and pat her bottom and say pooh-poos and most of the time wants a diaper change.
She has on occasion just randomly yelled out WHEE. It's so cute!
She loves to flush the pee-pees and pooh-poos away and sometimes does before we even finish! Opps!
She has gotten really good at communicating when she wants us to sit or come over by in a very commanding voice saying SIT and patting the spot or saying MAMA or DADA SIT and patting the spot she wants us.
Don't ask me why but one of Madelyn's favorite things to do it go outside with a plastic bag on her hand and pick up Leia's pooh-poos! I am sure I will love this in the future but it's so weird! Any time she finds a small empty bag, she'll put it over her hand and run to the door and say pooh-poos. She actually had gotten a few nuggets with her bag but usually is okay with just pointing them out to me.
She loves feeding the animals. I especially love when she feeds Preta in the morning because she'll go open the bathroom closet door by herself, grabs Preta's cereal container box, asks for help in opening it, goes and gets his bowl and fills it with lots of dry food. She also loves mixing Leia's wet and dry food and making Leia sit and then saying all done after she has placed the bowl. Leia still waits for an all done from us but it's really cute that she knows exactly what to say and do.
She loves giving Leia her kong and locking her in her crate when we are leaving. She can even lock the crate herself!
She likes to say Dada, Leia, and Preta over and over again asking where they are. It goes something like this. Madelyn: "Dada?" Me: "Dada at work." "Leia?" "Leia in her crate." "Preta?" "Preta at home sleeping" and then repeats forever!
When one of us leaves Madelyn, we'll come over and give her a kiss and then she'll insist that whoever is leaving give the other one of us a kiss too. It goes something like this. Daddy says, "Madelyn, can I have a kiss" and then she'll kiss him. Then she says, "Dada, Mama" and then daddy gives mommy a kiss too and she is very pleased!
When we had the Christmas tree up, she loved going over to the tree and pointing to the ornaments that looked like Leia, Preta and Santa and saying their names.
She is very independent and carries a little stool around so she can get to things she wants such as getting up on the couch or looking out the window or getting her snacks in the pantry!
When she is looking for someone or something, she puts her hands up to ask "where is it?" and then says the name. For example, if she wants to know where Leia is, she'll put her hands up to say where is she? and say "Leia?"
She loves calling the animals Leia Baya and Preta Beta over and over. It's so cute. Sometimes she gets messed up and starts calling them just Baya and Beta too.
We love taking her swimming. She loves to count 1, 2, 3 and then jump off the side (holding our hands). She also loves to be thrown in the air between us. She does a good job at kicking and sometimes blows her bubbles. She has no problems going underwater. We also like to play ring around the rosy and motor boat, motor boat in the pool. I think she'll be a little fish one day.

Teeth Total = 10 (8 fronts and 2 left molars)

Weight = 23 lbs (52%*)
Height = 2 ft 7 inches (25%*)
Head Circumference = 18.35" (56%*)
*WHO percentiles

Sign language: She still signs these but often times it's while also saying the word. I think she thinks that if she signs and speaks, she'll get it faster: please, more, milk, thank you, eat, all done

Words:Her words have EXPLODED. This will be the last list of words. It was too much work to make! We counted 119 words and the list just keeps on growing. She is also saying some two word sentences mostly comprised of hi or bye Leia, Preta, Dada or Mama. It's really cute when she says bye-bye Leia and bye-bye Preta over and over when we are leaving the house.

"1, 2, 3", Abby (friend at school), all done, all gone, apple, Aunt Beth (Aunt Bee), baby (bebe), ball (ba), banana (man-a), bath (ba), bed (be), beep-beep, belly button (be), belt (bel), bib, bike, book (ba), boot, bowl, broom (bre), bubble, bump, butterfly (b-fly), bye, cat, cheek, cheese, chin, choo-choo (for a train), cococous (co-co), cold, Connor (non-ner), cracker, cup, dada, diaper, dog, dolphin (dol), down (dow), duck, ear, elbo, elmo, eye, eyebrow (eye-bow), fish (phee), fly, fork, go, goose, grandma, grandpa, hair, happy (for If your happy and you know it), hat, head, hear (and points to her ear), help (help-boo), hi, home, hot, JOE!, Juice (Ju-Ju for OJ), Juliana (nana), jump, knee, knife, lady bug, Leia, light, Madelyn (Ma), mama, milk (ma), mine, mitten (me), moon, more, mouse, mouth (me), nail, no (I had left this off the list and it's probably the most used word!), nose (no), off, on, O's (for Trader Joe's O's cereal), owl, pants (pe), paw (Leia's & Preta's paws), peacock, peek-a-boo, please, pocket (poc), pooh-poos, pop, Preta, rock (as in rock in chair), Rock a baby (for Rock a Bye Baby Song), Santa, school (cool), see, shoe, sit, sock, spoon, star, tail, teeth, thank you, this, toes, toot, tree, tunnel, turtle, uh-oh, up (up-boo), walk, water (wa-wa), and yes (yea).

Animal noises: grr for bear, buzz (she says beez) for bee, peep for bird, meow for cat, peep for chick, moo for cow, woof, woof for dog, quack, quack with arm movements for duck, trumpet sound with a trunk arm movement for elephant, makes a fish face for fish, maa for goat, honk, honk for geese, neigh (really loud) for horse, baa for lamb or sheep, roar for lion, ooh-ahh for monkey, hoot, hoot for owl, oink, oink with head movements for pig, cocka-ca for rooster, pee-you (with nose plug) for skunk, and hiss for snake!

She also knows a lot of body parts. Some she knows the words for and others she can just point to: belly button, cheek, chin, ear, elbow, eye, eyebrow (eye-bow), feet, fingers, hair, hand, head, knee, leg, mouth (me), neck, nose (no), teeth, toes and tongue.

Now for some photos of this big 18 month old.