First off, I can’t believe my baby girl is 20 months old! Where has the time gone! Lucy, I just can’t believe that the baby I brought home from the hospital is now walking/running around with her own personality, pigtails, and mind of her own!

These posts have really changed from when you were a baby. Then, I was trying to document things like weight gain, baby milestones, sleeping schedule, etc. Now, I feel like you have settled into your toddler years and the change isn’t so rapid (thank goodness!). You are about 23 pounds now and definitely harder to hold than you used to be. That combined with my growing pregnancy belly, and you have started to do most of the walking from our car to the store. You are getting very good at holding my hand as we walk into the grocery store, Target, etc. One way I can tell you’re getting older is that your clothing sizes have started to have much wider gaps between them. I mean seriously, you are supposed to be in 2T for a whole year!? How’s that supposed to work? As a first time mom, I’m used to a new clothes size each 3 months, so it’s really weird to try to plan for your clothes lasting that long.

You are getting to be little miss independent. You are also very brave. Today Jason/Daddy was climbing up a ladder to cut down the limb of a tree and you kept wanting to climb right up after him! Of course we wouldn’t let you, which you weren’t too happy about. But when he was finished, we let you climb all the way  up to the top (with us right there in case you fell of course). You also just started to climb the rock wall on your little playset (with help). You have mastered going up and down that slide and will do it over and over on your own. I remember just recently helping you up those stairs…. You also really like to take a ball up there with you, roll the ball down the slide, and then slide down after it. You LOVE playing outside. It is your favorite place to be. You didn’t really mind the cold and would play outside in the winter, but we weren’t quite as willing to go outside with you. Now that the spring is FINALLY starting to come around, we have spent some wonderful afternoon/evenings outside playing with you. You like being pushed around in your little CozyCoupe and are very well trained to hold your legs up when we push you. You haven’t quite figured out how to push yourself with your legs though. Your favorite toys right now are your outside balls (another word you can say!). They only cost like $3 each and you absolutely love throwing and kicking them around outside.

You love to help out with any chore you can. You help me unload the dishwasher, put clothes in the washing machine, pick up your toys, etc. Truth be told, it takes a lot longer having you help me, but I’m trying my best to be patient (not my strongest suit) and let you have fun helping. You have started to really LOVE books (another word you can say!). Every morning when I get you up, we read some books together. You especially love your two Bibles, I think mainly because you know that we only let you look at them when we are with you because they are “nicer”. The books that entertain you the longest are “lift-the-flap” books, those are worth their weight in gold around here because they entertain you for a grand total of about 5 minutes! You also helped me bake some brownies a few weeks ago and loved it. I think we are going to have lots of fun cooking together in the years to come! 🙂

You continue to love bath time (you can say “bath” – seems like the words you say mainly start with “b”). We got you some bathtub crayons that you enjoyed, but then you started to only like playing with them when they were submerged in water (which makes them disintegrate, since they are made of soap), or if they were in your mouth… so I don’t think you are quite ready for those. You mainly like to fill a big cup up with water over and over and dump it on yourself. Today, you experimented by dumping water outside of the tub (I was not happy about that one). You also tummy surf sometimes to submerge yourself under water. One weird thing you have started to do recently is scream when I dry you off with a towel on your changing table. I have no idea why but you just want the towel off of your body as fast as possible…who knows?

You have a funny habit of moving your toys all around the house. No toy is too big. In fact, this week you tried to carry your heater (it was unplugged) across the house until you dropped it in the hallway. We often have to tell you to not move your chairs around the kitchen and house. We think you may have a future career moving furniture haha. You also like to sit in boxes. We have an ottoman filled with toys in the living room and you mainly like to take all the toys out and climb in and out of the empty box.

You are starting to have a longer attention span and enjoy coloring and stickers. You still inevitably end up either chewing on a crayon or dumping the crayon box on the floor, but all in all we have been coloring more lately.

You are not picky at all and love pretty much all types of foods. Your favorite food by far is fruit! We call you a “fruitatarian”. You love bananas and would eat one at every meal if we let you. Your other favorite foods are pizza, apples, pears, canned fruit, cheese, gummi snacks, ice cream, and mac n’ cheese. Typically you just want to eat what we eat. One funny thing is that you absolutely must have the same sauce that I eat (and I eat a lot of sauces…) If I dunk my pizza in the garlic butter sauce, you must as well. If I put parmesan cheese on my pizza, then you want us to put some on yours too. If we have salsa and sour cream with our mexican food you want some too. We have actually resorted to giving you your own little sauce bowl so you can dunk things over and over… haha. I recently started letting you have milk and cereal which you think is very cool. Most of the time you even finish by drinking the milk out of the bowl! 🙂

Recently, Grandma and Grandpa Baareman came and watched you for the weekend while me and daddy went to a Marriage Conference in Myrtle Beach. They had so much fun with you and you did great! They took you to Steak N’ Shake, the park, and played outside with you a lot. You also went with me to Atlanta to visit family. Aunt Kristen took care of you one day while I worked and you had lots of fun playing with Wyatt, although you were pretty scared of her two dogs, it took you about a day to get used to them. You also got to play with your aunts and uncle in Marietta and got to play on their swing set some more. I was super excited to find lots of stuff for you at a consignment sale. I got you a little potty (that is hiding in the shed now until you are ready for it), a Little People doll house, a backpack, and lots of books and puzzles.

In mid January, I had a business trip to Atlanta and you got the 24 hour flu bug. Perfect timing!?! NOT! After a few frantic phone calls we had our friend watch you one morning, and daddy took a day and a half off to stay home with you and nurse you back to health. It was hard being away from you during that time, but you were such a trooper! You were fine by the time I got home, then daddy got sick! It was a pretty miserable few weeks around here!

We love you so much Lucy! You bring so much joy to our lives. I love watching you learn and grow. Seeing your personality emerge is one of my favorite things about this stage. I’m excited for you to become a big sister soon. I know you will enjoy having a playmate.

Love, Mommy