Almost 18 months!

Lily continues to play mom, and it's so amusing to me. She washes my arms when I'm giving her a bath; she points to the pictures in her books and asks me "What's this?", just like I do when reading to her; and of course, she covers me with the blanket and says "shh"to put me to sleep. Adorable. This really is a fun time to be a mom. My sister, Suzanne, and I were talking about her daughter's upcoming birthday (one already!), and as she said, "The first birthday party is really more for the parents - we made it, everyone survived - whew!" I imagine this is even more true with two. But the truth is that the first year is hard - amazing in its own right but still hard. There are still challenges with Lily's age, but it's not the same for many reasons. Probably the main difference is that we are all on a schedule, and Lily sleeping from 8:00 pm - 7:00 am on a regular basis helps immensely. The rewards seem to increase as well. Rolling over, sitting up, and crawling are all huge milestones, but there is nothing like watching her figure out the world. The most wonderful development to date is her increasing language skills. There is no doubt that parents and babies have a communication system from day one, but it is awesome to actually be able to talk with her and have her understand. We are just at the beginning of the language adventure, but I am loving it so far. With increased understanding however, she will be subjected to Carl's jokes, poor girl. Today Lily requested her juice cup while she was riding her little bike, and Carl said "no" because he is opposed to drinking and driving. He actually told her that and so matter-of-factly. Again, poor girl. Below are some pictures of my little girl working hard at being a big girl.