Holly is 18 Months Old/Happy Birthday to Me!

Holly turned 18 months old yesterday, the same day that I turned… well, the same day that I had a birthday.

She is truly amazing. She is smart, stubborn, adventurous and loud. And she is so vocal. She is talking a lot now, though her speech is almost exclusively single words — nouns, of course. She says drink, cat, Mama, Dada, poop, eyes, nose, hair, hat, chin, cheeks, bum, shoes, outside, ice, dog, tree, and on and on. She also says Emrick’s name, though it comes out as “Enk”. But today she said “Emmick”, so she’s almost got it! She doesn’t combine words yet, except for one short sentence which she just learned this week. That sentence is “Stop it!”, a command she lodges at Emrick whenever he’s bugging her, which he does sometimes. And by sometimes, I mean all the time. He loves her so much and loves playing with her, and sometimes in his eagerness he invades her space, and bosses her, takes toys from her, pokes her, teases her, forces hugs on her, etc. It’s all in love (Really!) but teaching him to respect her boundaries and personal space is an ongoing process to be sure. Anyway, it is quite astonishing to hear my BABY yell, with perfect enunciation, “Stop it!” at her crayon-stealing brother.

I picked up this hat in Target’s dollar section, and Holly loves it. The day we bought it, she grabbed the People Magazine I was browsing in the checkout line, and then proceeded to open it and look at the pages like a grown up. Thank goodness for phone cameras.

Here are five things about Holly Belle.

1. She can hold a bulk-sized box of Goldfish in a headlock, using only her legs.

2. Sometimes Marcus and I think she looks like Tobey Maguire.

3. She finds it comforting to have one binkie in her mouth while holding another binkie on her head.

4. She finds it even more comforting to have two binkies on her head. She sometimes falls asleep this way when I put her down for naps and at bedtime.

5. And lastly, she likes to sit in buckets, baskets, anything small and cozy.

So that’s a little about Holly. On Thursday, I took her in for her 18-month check-up with our new pediatrician here in California. She had to get some shots, and the poor thing was so sore and miserable for the rest of the day. On the plus side, she slept like a rock at naptime for the next two days. And now, except for a very low grade fever, she is back to her old, high-energy self. I don’t recall her height and weight measurements (as taken at the doctor’s office) at the moment, but I do remember that her height was at the 67th percentile. I specifically asked about this because at her last checkup in Utah, they said she was at the 30th percentile. On the one hand, it surprised me to think that she was only at the 30th because she had previously registered much higher/taller than that. On the other hand, it made sense to me that her percentile ranking might drop since Marcus and I are short.

But she is growing so fast now, I would have been really skeptical if they had told me she was at the 30th percentile again. She is only 18 months, but she already fits well into size 2 clothes. I mean, most of her 18-month-size clothing still fits fine, but I suspect it will grow snug in a month or two, and in another month after that, it will be too small to fit comfortably. Her 12-month-size pants fit like Bermuda shorts now. Compare that with Emrick, who at 18 months old, was just starting to almost be big enough to fit properly into his 12-month-size pants. This is an entirely different experience. I find myself constantly thinking, “Ohhhh. So THIS is what parents mean when they talk about how fast their kids outgrow their clothes!”

Anyway, I don’t know if the doctor’s office in Utah made an inaccurate measurement last September (they did have a pretty rudimentary method of measuring, whereby they simply laid the squirming baby down on the examining table paper and then drew lines at the head and the heel, as opposed to this most recent measurement, which was taken in a tray with a sliding measurement thing) or if she was just in a growth plateau at the time, but in any case, it is clear that right now anyway, Holly is a little bit taller than average. I can only assume that this is Grandma Sorensen’s genetic influence! And I am back to thinking that Holly is on track to be taller than her parents and brother.

Here are some pictures of our big girl, taken yesterday morning.

Oh my goodness. This gorgeous, blue-eyed thing is so sweet and special, and we all love her so, so much. Oh Holly Belle! ~muah!~