17 months!

Last week Samantha turned seventeen months, and she is quite the smiley and feisty little one these days.

She's still been very picky with her eating. Meat and vegetables most often get thrown (we can't make sense of the random anomalies to this rule), but pasta and fruit continue to be the big winners.  

If she could eat all her food wandering around with her snack cup, she would definitely pick that. She's starting to want to eat off her own plates and insists on trying to use the spoon herself.

Love the scrunchy nose.  The faces she makes are hilarious.

Samantha is always moving.  Always.  She is almost running now and loves to practice going up and down stairs. She realized now that she can step up stairs when holding on to side railings.  And she tries to step down stairs as well (or at least come down them on her bum), but only if she's holding my hand.

Samantha continues to rather be outside than anywhere else. She makes demands to be outside "Ous" all the time. 

S has started to notice when her hands are dirty, and she likes to rub them on my pants/leg to get off any dirt that is there.  Funny kid.  Our other favorite gesture she makes is the little shoulder shrug she does when she doesn't know something. 

Her language has expanded a little bit in the last month.  She now says "Hi," "Ball," "Buh-bye," "Yes," "No," "Mama," "Uh-oh," "Woah," "Out," "B" for Bird and Banana and "Sh" for fish and shoe.

But even though she doesn't say much, she seems to understand everything.  She answers very definitively "Yeah" or "No" to different questions. And she follows basically any instructions you giver her - "Go upstairs," "Give your baby doll her bottle," "Find doggy" (she has totally adopted her puppy dog as her favorite stuffed animal in the last month or so), etc.

We can also see that she understands what is normal and what isn't.  When we balance something on our heads that shouldn't be there- she laughs.  She really thinks little things that are different than they should be are super silly.  However, balancing in mommy's shoes- not silly- basically something she was obsessed with this month.

Lastly, Samantha is really so friendly.  She now smiles and waves to all sorts of people whenever we go out places and even blows kisses sometimes.  She is quite the charmer.  We love that she feels confident enough to hold her own in church daycare and to explore new places (after she takes a few minutes to warm up).  

Love this little friendly smile.  Can't believe she's almost a year and a half!