Where has the time gone?

I'm home today after Izzie's 18 month doctor's appointment, she's napping and I thought it was a perfect (and long over due) time to post some stuff. It kills me how much she's grown in the last few months and even though it's inevitable, she's becoming a little girl. The development (physically and mentally) between 12 and 18 months has been unreal!!

• She's trying to talk and saying things like banana, apple, more, cheese, book, Caesar, shoes, hat and probably many more that I can't remember right now. Mind you, they don't come out of her mouth sounding the way they should, but she gives it an honest try. I'm trying to get her to say Lilo...since they spend every day together...but she can't quite get it out. It ends up sounding more like that crazy noise you make when you flap your tongue in and out of your mouth.
• She says 'Hi' and 'Bye' and waves at the approprate time. Usually we're out on the road and half way home and she's still screaming 'bye!' at Salma (our babysitter). She's even blowing kisses and giving high fives! They are both super cute.
  
• She seems to love to climb on anything. When we are playing in her room she always pulls the giant bear out of the little kids size rocking chair and gets in and rocks away. Then after a minute or so of that she climbs into mommy's rocking chair and rocks like mad with a huge grin on her face.
• We just realized that she's gotten really good at following directions. Even though she can't always tell us what she wants, she always seems to know what we're telling her (unless it's to stop crying or something she doesnt' want to hear). She likes to clean up all her toys and put them in the giant toy box...but that also leads to her thinking 'hey this is cool, I should get this out again and play with it!'. So we're still working on the cleaning and staying clean bit.
• She's starting to sing and dance. I sing to her all the time and she it's so cute when she tries to imitate me and sing along. Her favorite is the 'No more monkey's jumping on the bed' with the finger point and everything. And she's become a dancing machine. It doesn't matter where we are, if she hears music she starts boppin' along to it. Her dancing is a bit crazy though...it's usually arms flailing, knees bouncing and then spinning in circles. The other night Uncle T said something about her dancing just like him.
  

So this is just a few of the new things she's been doing lately. I feel like we just passed 1 and we're already halfway to 2! I'm just glad that we get to spend as much time with her as we do to see all this new stuff happening!


I also have to mention that this year we threw yet another awesome Halloween party. The 3 of us decided on a Star wars theme and dressed up as Princess Leia, Luke Skywalker and Yoda. Izzie was the CUTEST Yoda ever! I tried for a few weeks before to try to get her to wear the hat and about 0.5 seconds after putting it on her she'd rip it off. But for whatever reason, the night of the party seeing everyone else with hats on she didn't seem to mind and left it on all night! I think she was in character for this lovely pic!

And now Christmas is on the way!! Last weekend got on the GO train and went to see the Santa Claus Parade and Izzie absolutley loved it. I think the stimulation of all the noise and the huge floats interested her more than what was actually in the parade, but either way we had a blast. So now we're working on saying Santa...34 days left or something insane like that??


That's it for now...once again I'm going to try to be better with blogging stuff. I think about it all the time, I just don't have the time to sit and get it done!
Does thinking about it count??