Nineteen months!

Julia has had to relearn her age because she is now 19 months!

• Julia is super expressive. She laughs a lot, and even fake laughs and fake cries. If I fake cry back to her, she'll say to me, "It's okay, mommy," and hug and pat me. So sweet.
• Julia is a very opinionated young lady. When she wants us to go somewhere with her, she grabs our hands and pulls us. When she is told no, she sprints away from us angrily. And sometimes, in her haste, accidentally runs into furniture. Or sometimes when she is told that she can't have something she wants, she has a 15 second meltdown. Then, she says, "Mommy, hug!" and flings her arms out. When I approach, she'll say, rather smugly, "No. No hug." I guess she's punishing me (or Daddy) by not giving us the desire of our hearts (a hug from her) when she doesn't get hers (whatever random thing she shouldn't be touching)? Have I mentioned that she's pretty smart/manipulative? Or, as a classmate of ours said, she's good at "social engineering." Haha.
• Julia has gotten better at imaginative play. Our guest bed is currently a "boat" and there are construction paper fish in the "water" (carpet) surrounding the boat. We go fishing and we also feed the fish with bits of orange construction paper, "carrots" according to Julia. Or sometimes the bed is a plane and we look at the sun, moon, clouds, and birds in the sky and buckle our seat belts and eat delicious plane food (we're using our imaginations, remember?) of Julia's choosing like "carrots," "apples" and "grapes." She has been having us dress her Sesame Street characters in her clothes, which are much too big on them and look hilarious. For instance the other day, Cookie Monster was in a pink dress. Or today, he was undressed except for white socks on his feet, which covered his tiny legs entirely, making them look like stump socks for Cookie's bilateral above the knee amputations.
• Lately, Julia doesn't want to ride in her stroller; she wants to push it. She puts stuffed animals in the umbrella stroller and tries to push it, even though it is awkwardly tall for her to handle. So, we recently took her to Toys R' Us and bought her a doll-sized umbrella stroller. It's much easier for her to handle, but she has decided that she wants US to push it around. And it's awkwardly short for us. Haha!
• Julia continues to get better and better about being polite. The other night, the three of us were at a Vietnamese restaurant, and the young women waiting tables were so enchanted with her because every time they brought anything to the table, Julia said "thank you!" very enthusiastically. They brought her fortune cookies and even folded a tiny paper crane for her. She was quite the hit.
•  One morning in Wichita, I was playing with Julia and letting Aaron sleep in a little. I needed to grab the diaper wipes out of our bedroom, though, and told Julia to wait quietly for me while I grabbed them. Instead, she followed me into the room and started yelling, "Number one daddy! Number one daddy!" Not sure where she got that, but it was pretty cute. Later, Aaron thanked her for the compliment she'd (likely unknowingly) given him, and encouraged her to say, "#1 mommy!" too. We told her that she was our "#1 Julia!" The other day in church, Julia started shouting, "#1 mommy! #1 mommy!" I'm sure the people around us were thinking we must be pretty arrogant parents to teach our daughter to parrot compliments about us! Haha!
• Julia often yells, "I'm going to get you, Mommy!" and takes off running...away from me. Haha! It means that she wants me to yell out "I'm going to get you, Julia!" and chase her until I finally catch her and tickle her. A lot. She loves it.

And we love her. A lot. Nineteen months is a lot of fun :-)