Nineteen months!

Today Paisley is 19 months old!  I feel like she has grown up so much over the past few months.  It looks like the last time I blogged a monthly post for Paisley was when she was five months old!  It is hard to believe how much has changed since then.

This morning she weighed about 20.5 lbs on our bathroom scale, and I have no idea how tall she is.  She is still really little compared to kids her age in the United States, but in South America she seems about the same size as a lot of other kids her age.  Her third canine tooth came through this past week, so we have one more of those and then we should get a little break before the next set of molars come in, I think.

Where do I even begin to describe our fun little girl?

Paisley is a chatterbox!  All day long she talks and talks and talks to me, mostly in phrases.  For a while I kept track of how many words she knew, by adding to a list whenever she started using a new word correctly.  I gave that up several months ago, after she had around 800 words and the list became too difficult to maintain.  Now, she has a lot more than that!  She knows plurals, possessives, and gerunds (-ing words), plus shapes and colors.  She knows a lot of letters and letter sounds, and she is very interested in numbers but she only knows 1, 2, 3, and 5.  (Usually she just counts "1, 2, 1, 2...many!")  When she drops things she says "oopsie daisy" and it is adorable every time.  I kind of want to record everything she says for a day, so that we remember what she is like right now!

She also knows some words in Spanish: hola, gracias, chau, que rico, mañana, vamos, casa, papa, nado, agua, ducha, linda, and probably a few others that I am forgetting.  She is constantly making friends with people around us, partially because she is blonde, and partially because she grins at people and then they melt when they hear her say "hola" or "gracias".  People are always stopping to tell her how pretty she is, or touch her, and she is usually tolerant and friendly.

Paisley loves to "draw" and "write" which both mean 'to scribble'.  If she sees me writing something she suddenly desperately wants the pen I'm using so that she can draw or write.  She also enjoys coloring, with crayons or ColorWonder markers.  And she loves to paint, especially when she can make handprints.  She really likes handprints, or if we're not painting then she likes to have me trace her hand.

Paisley also loves to swim!  Uruguay has been colder than we expected, so we haven't done much swimming since we left Panama, until about a week ago.  She is so delighted when we go swimming--she keeps a huge grin on her face, and she squeals with excitement!  She is good at kicking, and not very good at scooping anymore.  We will keep practicing.

Paisley loves her iPad mini that we gave her for Christmas.  Her favorite games are Endless Alphabet and Endless Reader.

Paisley still loves dogs.

Her favorite foods are: Nana (which is nursing), cheese, fruit leather, pretzels, and goat milk.  She also loves chocolate, cookie dough, and ice cream when we eat them.

She really wants to learn how to jump, but hasn't quite got it yet.

She likes to help (usually by carrying bags or cleaning up stuff she has dropped, or helping carry laundry outside, or by mixing things in the kitchen), and also likes to be with me.  Actually, she loves to be with me.

She also loves when I read to her, and she likes to pretend to read books.

Paisley loves to be gotten, which is where I say "I'mmmm going to get you!" and then I start to creep towards her, and she squeals and runs to me.


She loves using the remote to open our front gate.  She likes taking lids off of things and putting them back on.  She likes checking the kitchen trash to see if we have added anything interesting.  She loves to crack eggs.  She loves colored baths, although we don't have a tub here, so that was mostly just a treat on our vacation to the US.

Paisley is also very sweet.  She used to very very sweetly say "Love!" and hug me.  Now she says "love you" or sometimes even "I love you"... but I noticed this weekend it almost always precedes her asking for something, which is disappointing, although I guess it just means she is smart if she is making kind of clever attempts to manipulate me.  "Love you.  Nana? Ookkaaayy."  Or, "I love you too.  Up?  Ookkkkaaayyy!"  She asks for things and then says "Oookkaaayyy!" or "All riiiight" just like I do for the times that I do agree to what she wants.  That's kind of funny.  

Paisley is such a funny kid!  We are enjoying her very, very much.