We're Having....

Just kidding...you've got to wait three more days. I know...it's killing me waiting! We had our appointment to go do the ultrasound today. And of course the one night a year that we get ice and snow in central and southern Arkansas had to be last night! Roads were too treacherous and it just wasn't worth the risk to go. So we're rescheduled for Friday to find out the gender.

In the meantime, I'll dedicate this post to my baby girl's 17 month updates. Zoe's about 32 inches tall and weighs about 24 pounds. Getting big...almost too big for me to carry around in my pregnancy. She's hitting that time in her life where everything is about mimicking those around her...both actions and words.

This last month has been a big one for her mentally. She amazes me with how much she understands. For example, last week, she brought me an ornament w/o the top and the hook. My mind was elsewhere and I set it aside temporarily. Four hours later, I took the ornament to her and asked her to show me where she found this. She pointed me to the exact spot and I found the top and hook just under where her little finger was pointing to.

We're still potty training, although schedules have gotten off so much in the frenzy of Thanksgiving vacation and the two illnesses she's had since then that we're backtracking. We'll hit it hard again after Christmas. I'll probably spend about a week getting her to the point where we left off and then progress from there.

Her new fascinations this month are puzzles...wooden or the kind with the little knobs on them. She's gotten really good at picking out where they go and is still working on figuring out how to turn them just right to fit them in their space. She also enjoys her new memory game. We found a little memory game at a consignment shop that has cute pictures of every day items. At first, out of 36pairs, she knew at least half of them already. We've since learned the rest and she's learned to say the words to about half of them. We don't actually play it the way it's meant to be played. I'll throw about anywhere from half to all of the cards out on a table and ask her to find ______. She'll find one and I'll tell her to find the other one. She LOVES to play that game and to try to mimic my sounds. She's also found a love in playing with cars...doesn't matter what size as long as it rolls and she can crawl around and push it. We bought her some little cars that are in the shape of animals for Christmas...some that don't look too boyish. ;-) She'll love them.

She's finally learned to feed herself with a spoon successfully with relatively no mess. It took me several months to convince myself to let her try b/c I knew what a mess on the carpet it would make.

New words this month are too many to count. She's learning a couple a day lately. Her newest words that she says most often are "blanket" actually pronounced blanket, "happy", "Jeezzus" for Jesus, "Git Up" for get up, "Sit Down", "Dance", "Jump", "Mayamiut" for wait a minute, "jacket", "cold", "hot", "touchdown" - a result of watching Monday night football with daddy, "right back" in response to "I'll be right back", and her absolute favorite right now, "lights" in response to seeing Christmas lights. If you haven't noticed, we're starting to hear lots of two word sentences and phrases. That probably started a few weeks ago. She loves to mimic what we say..most often in the form of the last word or two that we say. She will do it both when we're talking to her and when we're reading her books. She's learned to say all body parts including knee and elbow and will poke your eyes out if you're not careful. She enjoys naming all kinds of animal sounds if you ask her what the _____ says. She's also learning basic shapes and a few numbers since we have a wooden shape and number puzzle that she puts together. She knows the "B", "D", "O", and "Z" from the alphabet...no rhyme or reason why she knows those.

We've learned recently that she LOVES to dance as I'm sure you saw from a video a few posts back. Her favorite Christmas song is "Rockin Around The Christmas Tree" and just about any other upbeat song. At church the other day, the children's choir sang a short Christmas program at a family fellowship. She wiggled out of Darin's arms and stood next to where he was sitting and just twirled around until she got dizzy. Guess what song it was to?

She's now running just about everywhere she goes. She likes to play hide-and-seek with Jedi (yes, he actually plays with her) and chase with mommy and daddy. She'll play hide-and-seek with us too, but it turns into a game of chase eventually. And climbing...oh goodness is this child a monkey! She tries to climb on everything...even the coffee table.

I guess that's about it on updates for the last month. Here are some fun pictures I took yesterday and today. Notice the hair and even more importantly the barrette in her hair! Yay for hair!!!!