Eighteen months

Eighteen months: one and a half.  Or as someone put it the other day when making small talk, 'oh, so coming up on two then?'  Er - no.  When you are eighteen months you are still six months off being two, and that's a long time when you're this little!

I could title this post 'my daughter is a genius'.  Of course she isn't really, she's a perfectly normal 18-month old, but she is learning so many new things and surprises us so often with what she does know that we think she's pretty intelligent.  The biggest thing (to us) this month is probably letters.  To Marisca they are just different shapes that she can recognise, but she can now spot and say A, B, M, S and E.  As bookworms ourselves we're rather proud of this.  Reading books and spotting letters really is one of her favourite things to do, so it's just as well we like books too! And we have an excellent library nearby which we visit regularly before we get too bored of reading the same stories over and over (and over) again.

Marisca is also getting the hang of the order things happen in.  Whether or not we like it, we've fallen into several routines in the day and over the week: nap always happens after lunch, toddler groups are all in the morning, teeth are cleaned after bath etc.  And Marisca likes to know what is happening next, and show us she knows.  Shoes and coat on, and she's hanging off the door waiting to go out.  After her bath she's straight over to the sink to get her toothbrush.  I guess for her it is a nice way to have a little bit of control over what happens next: so much of a toddler's life is defined by what we as parents want to do that it's nice to have some certainties in your day.

Being the little girl that Tim mentioned in the last post, she's no where near fitting into most of the 18 month clothes, but we have cracked out the wintery dresses.  It's getting cold up here!