Beth is 18 months old!

Happy Half Birthday to my sweet Rosebud! She's outgrown her super attachment to mama and will often become more comfortable in a new environment before her big sister! She is constantly on the go. It's really amazing how different she is - both from her big sister and from 3 months ago!

Beth is still very petite for her age. Her well visit isn't for another few weeks, but she's still in 12 month clothing (moving into the 18 month clothing). For reference, at this age, Nora was in 2T clothing! She eats very well, but only if she can feed herself. it has made for some rather messy meals, but she is totally getting the hang of it! Yogurt and soup is still very messy. We give her mostly greek yogurt because it's thicker and when we have soup, we strain out a lot of the broth so she can just scoop up the veggies. She eats all sorts of veggies, fruits, grains and meats. One of her favorites is millet. I think she would eat millet or scrambled eggs with spinach and cheese every day if we let her! She also LOVES freeze dried fruits, fresh berries of any type and frozen peas. She will even ask for peas by walking over to the fridge and pointing at the freezer "peas peas" - or peas, Please.

She's become quite adventurous with climbing recently. Unlike her sister, she does not seem to have the timid/cautious side to her. This, of course, means trouble! We have had quite a number of spills recently from trying to jump off the couch, climb into and out of the high chairs and jumping out of the learning tower. Ever the engineer, she has been working on her problem solving skills as well. She was playing with a pounding toy and is really still too uncoordinated to pound the pegs with the hammer. But, she wasn't deterred. She toddled over to the wooden blocks and grabbed a rectangle block. she tried to balance the block on a single peg to give herself a bigger landing bad for the hammer. When that didn't work, she put the block on two pegs and started pounding away, very happy with her modification.

Beth, like her big sister, loves books. She will bring me books and say "read book" a few times each morning. It's really quite nice to have the mornings 3 days a week with just Beth. The recent snow days have made those days few and far between, but they are really nice to have! We play for a bit, clear the breakfast dishes and get dressed, start a load of laundry and then play some more. Sometimes we run a few errands on our way to pickup, some mornings she decided to nap for a bit and some mornings we pop over to the library or a playdate for some much needed fun!

Here's some photos of Beth. I've been keeping the smugmug (see link to photos) up to date, so you can look at plenty more photos. I've got lots of January and Feb. photos in the kids section, as well as some photos from a recent snowstorm that ended in a sunny morning with snow covered trees - simply breathtaking. I got some nice photos, but they didn't do justice to how beautiful the morning really was!

Beth, refusing to sit next to her bear for an 18 month photo!



I just think Beth looks beautiful in this photo.


Beth loves to wear all sorts of hats, in all sorts of ways!





Messy messy. But, she's learning a great skill - feeding herself.

Oatmeal


Cranberry-blueberry pie!


Yogurt!


Nora and Beth having a snack together in the kitchen. They move their furniture all over. They will often push these two chairs together and take turns inside the "boat."