Maddie Girl at 17.5 months

Maddie is almost ready to go to nursery. It will be interesting to see how she will do! She's definitely into things. She loves to climb. I find her on top of my dining table quite often and seems like she can get there faster than I can blink my eyes. I'd be cooking about 10 feet away, and one second she is on the ground, the next she is on the table. She thinks it's funny too when I am alarmed and rush to get her down - and tries to get away by hiding behind the centerpiece. I guess calm and collected should be my response here.

She also loves the piano. She takes Allie's piano book and turn the pages as she's banging on the keys. Last night she noticed Allie's piano book wasn't where it should be (it was in the office). She took it and tried to put it back on the piano book rest but was unsuccessful (the book is too big for her). I found the scattered pages and folder on the floor and Maddie on the chair. She looked at book and told me to "take it". As soon as I placed the book back in its place, she was content and started to play some keys.

She is quite a talker now - jibber-jabbering most of the time. She added some new phrases and words to her vocab -- "take it", please, thank you, "where'd go?", "where's dad?", "let's go", shoes, boo, and dirty. Often she will copy what we say. One time Kevin asked her "what's going on?" She said it back to him.

She loves trying on shoes so we find a pair here and a pair there. She also likes to get out the Swiffer mop when we're cleaning, and throwing things in the trash - I've found a perfectly good apple, a shoe, and a couple boxes of puzzles in there a time or two. With all that and taking boxes of cereal from the pantry and picking thru the marshmallows, she definitely keeps us busy. Her silly laughter and big toothy smiles are definitely worth all of her little handprints on our newly cleaned glass doors, little footprints on the freshly mopped floors (not just when it's Collin's turn to mop - he gets very agitated about those), and spilled cereal on the just-vacuumed floors. I think.