Grace is becoming quite the toddler! She is doing her best to keep up with the big kids and seems to have taken some lessons on how to be bossy from her big sister. She’s tough as nails but is a total Mama’s girl. She understands so much and is talking a lot these days.

We had her 18 month check up on Monday and she weighed 18 lbs, 3 oz and was 31 inches. She dropped off her growth curve again so she’s now been put on a high calorie diet. Basically, everything she eats now comes with butter, whipped cream or ranch dip and her milk comes with Carnation Instant Breakfast powder. She doesn’t seem to notice a difference, although she’s thrilled to be able to dip everything in ranch and was really excited to get ice cream for a snack.

One of Grace’s favorite phrases is ‘come on!’ which sounds like “MON!” and she pulls your finger to drag you along behind her. She gets very excited when we interpret correctly what she wants or is telling us and rewards us with a big cheesy smile as she claps for us like, “Yay, you’re finally catching on!”.

Grace recently went through a “clean up” stage which was kind of great, except that she cleaned up by throwing everything into the trash can. I pulled shoes, bathing suits, silverware and many other things out. I seem to have missed the tv remote though, which we are really missing. She is also in a baby doll stage. She loves to put her baby in the high chair to feed it and push it around in the stroller. She especially likes to feed her baby a bottle and to tell you “Shhhh!” when her baby is sleeping. She likes to play with the bigger baby dolls in the basement, but has a little tiny baby that she has started taking with her everywhere we go.

Grace LOVES to eat corn on the cob!!

One of the best things about Grace is that she LOVES to go to bed! She rarely cries or has a fit. Normally when we tell her it’s time to go to bed she runs to us and calls, “Night night!” over her shoulder to whoever happens to be within earshot. When we rock her, she snuggles up with her blanket and bunny and when we put her in bed she blows kisses and says, “Night night!” over and over until we close the door. It’s awesome!

It’s hard to believe how quickly she is growing up and changing, but it’s really fun to see her personality develop.