Amelie- 21 months

At 21 months, Amelie is talking more and more.  She calls herself "Ama" and loves Mama, Dada, WoWo and KaKa (Kenny).  Kenny really likes being called KaKa. She loves her lavendar knit blanket and trails it around the house, arranges it just right on the floor and snuggles into it with her bottle.   Amelie likes to read, likes playing trains, likes dumping out bins of legos all over the floor, and then vacuuming them up with her toy vacuum (except that toy vacuums do not actually pick up the thousand tiny pieces so I get to do that). She points to messes-- whether she made them or not-- and says "Ama" disapprovingly.  We recently realized she's actually saying "Oh, Man!"-- which is what Tammy says about messes-- but it sounds like she's chiding herself every time. She loves her dolls, and loves baby Jack at daycare... so funny how little girls have a mothering instinct right from the beginning. 

Amelie is so stubborn-- even more than Logan, which I didn't think was possible.  She is not good at sharing-- especially sharing me.  If we're reading or cuddling together and Logan approaches she swats him away and yells at him.  She hates to have her hair touched-- "ow, ow!"-- I can't get a barrette or pony tail in there for anything, even though her hair is always in her eyes. She loves cookies and whenever the timer on the oven beeps, she yells cookie! cookie!... perhaps because we use our oven for nothing except making cookies. She loves walks around the neighborhood to spot deer, hikes in the backpack, and toddling around outside finding rocks to add to her collection (like Daddy). She likes bath time and brushing her teeth, hide and seek (she always hides in the same spot between the bookcases in the guest bedroom), and trying on 10 different pairs of shoes-- her favorite being the snow boots. She likes to play in our bathroom and take all the little travel sized toiletries out of the bag, and all the jewelry out of their boxes, and strew everything all over the room... but I let her because its good for at least 10 minutes of peace. She and Logan are playing together more and more-- they like to play tag around the house, go camping in the living room, and cook in their toy kitchen.  Every once in a while it lasts for more than 1 minute and I glimpse a future when they might actually entertain themselves long enough for me to to to the bathroom by myself.