teeth
Ally now has 8 teeth !! 4 on top and bottom. She's still chewing on her hands a lot though, so maybe even more are coming in. I haven't seen signs of it yet, but I'll be so happy. teething sucks!

day care
The day care teachers have told me that they are proud of the way Ally defends herself. They say that if someone takes something from her, she tells the no and mine and cusses them out in baby talk. But she only does it when appropriate. The other day I was in there picking her up, but she wasn't finished with snack yet. Aden tried to take her cup. She shoke her finger at him and said "NO. lkjd asdfio alksdfjpl skdhfiuyhkd judhfiu CUP". It was really cute.

another slide
Prior to last night we had 4 slides in our backyard, 1 at Darra's house that she's bringing up to us next weekend, and one that Ally has outgrown in storage. So, what did we do last night? Bought her another one of course. None of our slides would fit over the side of the bigger blow-up pool we got for her so she'd have more room, so, now we'll have 6 in our backyard.

It was outside at Wal-mart without a price or sticker of any kind, so I went lookig for a way to buy it while Rob stood in line at the deli. I got the info, and carried the slide over to him, and Ally got excited. So, we stodd in line at the deli for half hour (they are always soooo slow) and let her slide. I highly recommend having a slide with you for standing in line with a toddler. It makes the time go much quicker and much quieter.

apple
July 4th we went over to my Mom's for dinner. She had some honeydew there, that Ally couldn't get enough of. She is convinced though that it is apples. We tried to tell her so many times, but she insists and argues with us. We say "no that's honeydew Ally, can you say honeydew?" (or sometimes even just melon) she shakes her head and says no apple. She more stubborn than us, so we kinda gave up on the fight now.

The thing is, she eats apples sometimes, and knows what they are. They definitely aren't her favorite. Tomatoes are apples too, and sometimes in books oranges are too.

bossy
Ally can get her point across pretty well too, when she wants something done. She knows the words for "come here" (and the hand gesture with it) "out" "up" "help". she uses them pretty effectively. When she wants something gone she tells us "out" and pushes it away with her arm. If she wants us to go outside, she grabs us and pulls and tells us to get "up". When we ask her what she wants, she says "out". If she gets the point across the Rob, then she grabs me too and makes sure we're both coming. She's getting really bossy

animal sounds
Ally has been talking up a storm. She has added so many words, I couldn't list them all. One of her favorite things to do now is to get a book that has a bunch of animals in it and point out all the ones she can identify by word. Like, she doesn't say cow, she says moo, but fish don't say anything, so she knows the word fish. And bunnies don't say anything, so she says hop. frogs say "m-bits". and pigs say "unh, unh, unh". Bees are about the only thing that she says the name and sound of.

honk, honk
Ally has some books about animals on the farm. There is one about ducks and one about geese (among others). She doesn't know the difference between the two. She was "quack, quack"-ing and pointing at the geese book the other day, so I told her it was a goose and they say "honk, honk". She looked at me kinda funny, then poked at the book. I didn't know what she was doing, until she grabbed her nose, and then mine and said "honk". First she had tried to honk the "duck"'s nose. After all, ducks don't say honk - noses do.

sleep
I haven't talked about sleep much lately. It's because I've actually been getting some!!! Ally has been sleeping pretty good for the past couple weeks. Her teeth aren't bothering her as much. We had a couple days where she was waking up in the middle of the night, but that was when the temp dropped, but the humidity didn't. We turned the thermostat down a little and she's sleeping all night again. She goes to bed at 9:00 and I grab her and her clothes and go to work. I change her at daycare when we get there. She's much happier too. When she goes to bed at night, she sometimes protests, but once we go down, most of the time she's out.

baby bumblebee
On the way to Knight's action park today, Ally learned the song "bringing home a baby bumblebee". She may have already known it, but she definitely knows it now. She was sitting in the backseat with her hands cupped waving them around in the air, so I thought she knew the song. I started singing it, and she looked kinda confused, but she picked up right away. Now, she says "bee-bee-bee-bee" when she wants to sing it.

peanut butter sandwiches
Ally has finally decided that peanut butter sandwiches are great. I spread PB on 2 slices then put them together and slice them diagonally. The first thing she does is to pull them apart and scoop up a fingerful of PB. She does that a couple times then gets around to taking a bite from one of the separated slices.

Last night Rob had her one his lap eating supper. He could see that it was inevitable that he would get PB wiped all over him, and tried to head it off by convincing Ally to put the sandwich backk together and take bites. So, first he told her that by having the slices apart, she was reaching across the table and sticking her arm in oneand getting PB on her arm. So Ally looked at the underside of her arm and grabbed it with her other (PB covered) hand making it worse. Rob pointed out this fact and told her that's why she should take bites instead. So Ally immediately followed his advice and tried to put her arm in her mouth. It cracked us up.

scrapbooking
I got hoooked on digital scrapbooking. It's much cheaper than paper, and I can do it without carting all the supplies around. This is what I've come up with so far. http://home.insightbb.com/~j.swaner

baby dolls
I cleaned up Ally's toy room the other day. She "helped" me which meant it took twice as long. I cleaned out some stuff she's too big for, and made room for what was left. Ally liked it a lot. There's more room for her to pay now, and she re-discovered a lot of stuff she had forgotten about. She found all her baby dolls. She tries to feed them and sit them up and lay them down. i told her one of them needed her hair washed in the fake little bathtub, so she got a rag and wiped down her head. Then she had to repeat it on all the other babies (even though some of them wear hats). One little baby is now naked and she carries it around a lot. It even went swimming with us the other day.

ring around the rosies
Ally learned "ring around the rosies" this week at day care. I wasn't aware of this though, so when she started turning in circles, I was puzzled. She kept looking at me like she expected something, but I couldn't figure out what - until she "fell down". Then I got it. I started singing the song to her and her face lit up. She ring'ed around til she got dizzy. I love watching her fall down though. She very carefully sits on her butt then flops her legs out in front of her. She won't even fall all the way to the floor unless I do it first. Then she slowly leans back and kicks her legs in the air.

love
I can't believe just how much I love my baby. It's so amazing that just this time last year, she was barely crawling. How did I get so lucky to have this little girl in my life? I can't imagine life without her now. I look at her and see her grinning at Elmo or trying so hard to put her shoe on or one of the countless other things I watch her do all night, and it almost makes me cry sometimes. I see the determination on her face when she's trying to climb into the kitchen chair; the pride when she makes it; the sheer enjoyment of watching her Elmo DVD; the fierceness in her eye when she tries to convince me to give her animal crackers for supper; the disgust when I give her (God forbid!) green beans. I pick up the camera to try to capture it, because I know that it will be gone so soon, but I look at the picture and it's so 2-dimensional. It can't catch all the feeling in the moment. Tonight, she was sitting against the arm of the couch watching TV streched out with her arms bent and hands behind her head. She just had this grin on her face that I want to much to remember. Mostly what the camera picked up, though, was her mouth halfway open, and her hair all messed up. I didn't even see those things. Oh well, at least it'll remind me of what I saw - my baby.

18 months pics
I put the 18 months pictures on the web. They third outfit is the same outfit she wore at 6 months in a different size. I can't believe the difference in her size between then and now. For one thing - she's thinning out a lot now that she's running around. Wow.

our swimming pool
Mom came over Monday and brought the girls to swim. It's really about the first time we've gotten in the pool so far. It was a little cold, but once you got used to it, it wasn't too bad. Ally had a blast. First, she was playing in her little one on the patio until I fniished vaccuuming the big one. Then she had a great time jumping in to Mom. Her idea of jumping is to hold onto your fingers and lean out and squat down until you "jump" her in. She loves it when she gets splashed a little. I jump her and don't let her get very far in the water and she gets impatient with me. When Rob does it, though she spends the next 15 seconds blowing raspberries and wiping her face off. But she would rather have him do it than me. She also loves to climb on and off the ladder. She even lets you hold her under her bely and let her pretend she's swimming. She even kicks her feet. Anyway, she had such a good time. We've gone swimming 3 or 4 times this week. I just took her out a little while ago and let her get good and tired for her nap that she is now taking. :)

teeth
Ally has been drooling like crazy, and chewing on her fingers lately. I thought for sure that her 4th top tooth was coming in, because it has looked like it for a long time now. But last night, her bottom 3rd and 4th teeth popped through her gums. That brings the total up to 7 (although her 3rd one still isn't all the way down yet). It's about time. She's 19 months old!

sleep and bargaining
We're doing great!!! She has slept all night for 3 or 4 nights in a row now. Before that, she was waking fewer and fewer times. She's started bargaining with us at bedtime though. Sometimes she climbs up to the table and tries to convince us she's hungry. Most of the time she tries to get us to read just one more book (or as she says bup).

food
All of a sudden, Ally is trying a couple new things. It's not like we can just give her anything to eat yet, but we're expanding the list. She used to only eat peanut butter on crackers. Well, that's not quite true. She used to eat peanut butter off of crackers, then hand the cracker back to us for a refill. She started eating peanut butter sandwiches a couple weeks ago - on wheat bread no less. She also stole some croutons off my salad, and now regularly eats popcorn shrimp. She tried Jello the other day and ate some of Bill's pistachio salad last time we were in Robinson. Last night, she stole both Rob's and my garlic bread. It's pretty cool.

NO
Ally has started to say no. It's not really what I expected yet though. For that I'm grateful. She hasn't made it to that stage where it can only be screamed at 100 dB. Instead, she usually starts out pretty calmly and matter-of-factly and says no. If, however, you fail to stop doing whatever (for example: offering her something she doesn't want to eat) or continue doing something she doesn't want you to (for example: putting her in her car seat), she changes her tone a little.

I know she's not a teenager, but they are the only beings I know of capable of making that sound. It's kinda of a cross between "You're not listening to me", "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard", and "I'm about to lose control and sream at you". With a little sarcasm thrown in.

I can't wait...