Sweet 16 (months)!

Julia turned 16-months on the 12th! She is growing so fast! (I know I say that every month... but it's true!)

Cheese!

Mischievous!

Another photo in this little rocker? Really, mom?

Highlights of this past month include:

• Hugs! Julia has gotten so affectionate lately! She loves giving hugs and love pats and kisses. It absolutely melts my heart. She has learned to blow kisses. She opens her arms wide and asks for hugs all the time. Julia especially loves asking for hugs during dinner, of course, when she's covered in food.
• "Hi!" Julia loves saying "hi" and waving to everyone and everything she encounters...whether the person or animal or object is in a store, at church, in a book, decorating the wall, etc. She is a very friendly girl.
•  Julia is a master imitator. You have to watch what you say because she loves to repeat it! We try not to say "no" too much, allowing her to explore within reason and saying "hot" or "yucky" or some other descriptive term that explains why we don't want her to do something if we have to refuse her. However, when I do say "no," she latches onto it and starts wagging her finger and saying, in her singsong little voice, "No, no, no!" It's pretty hilarious.
• Speaking of watching what you say around Julia...Some of Julia's lispy words sound like curse words... specifically "frog" and "sit" (I'm sure you can guess what they sound like). I made the mistake of telling Uncle Erik that yesterday because, in his own words, he is "too immature to handle that knowledge." So, if you are startled sometime before realizing that Julia is talking about frogs a lot, I blame him. Just kidding ;-)
• Speaking of family, Julia loves hers. A lot. She knows everyone in both Aaron's and my immediate families really well and often asks for them. We show her photos of them and she gets really excited and kisses them. She'll even say "love you" ("la ya") when prompted and is very generous with her hugs and kisses.
• Julia is getting so sophisticated in her movement. She can easily climb up her little slide now, she scales the playground at the park, she does a hilarious "jump" which is more of an energetic fall than an actual up, she is getting close to being able to somersault, and she twirls and moves her feet while dancing. Watch out world!
• Julia loves to learn! She's got a good chunk of the alphabet song down and can count to 10. She knows the names of colors and manages to guess the correct color at least 30% of the time when asked ;-)
• She's starting to be able to sort things, too. Lately, she's enjoyed lining up her plastic animals or her puzzle pieces on the fireplace or on Aaron's desk, and then putting them back. The other day, she had all the animals lined up, and then she sorted the farm animals back into her barn and the Noah's ark animals back into the ark all by herself.  
• Julia has been singing a lot lately and knows the words to a lot of songs. She's also gotten picky about her beloved music videos. She'll beg and beg for "minah" (music) and then we'll sometimes oblige her, but if we choose the "wrong" one she gets upset and starts crying and saying "no!" very forcefully over and over until we find the specific one she wanted all along. This is why we often hide our laptops from her ! ;-)
• Julia still has some funny suffixes. Avocado is "Ahh-deedo-deedo." Isley is "Eyes-lee-lee" and Ernie is "Er-nee-lee-lee." Cracks me up.
• Julia gets a better sense of humor every month. She thinks a lot of things are "fun-nee!" and loves to laugh. One of her favorite games lately is for us to chase her with her Fisher Price corn popper. She hands us stuffed animals and wants them to "chase" her... so we hold them near the handle of the popper and run after her. Sometimes, we'll be holding her dog, Violet, and all four Sesame Street characters, wearing a bead crown on our head, and running around after Julia, who is laughing wildly. It's a pretty crazy scene.
• We still use the stroller quite a bit, but we also sometimes take Julia out on a walk without it. She tolerates having to hold hands (since we threaten to "pick up" if she doesn't) and she loves plodding along in her little sneakers and also loves "jumping" when Aaron and I simultaneously gently swing her forward in a given step. It's a lot of fun.

Hooray for 16 months and for Julia's beautiful personality shining through more and more each month!