19 months

Pancake is developing in leaps and bounds and her level of cuteness is rising at the same rate.  Eventually she'll level off and become a bossy two/three-year old with lots of opinions, but for now she's delightful and adorable and we're enjoying every minute.

She's a super quick learner.  A few weeks ago I took out the shape sorter that Doodle used to play with.  I showed her how to do it and she played with it for a while, sometimes getting the shapes wrong, sometimes right.  She didn't know the names of any of them.  Today, I took the sorter back out.  She consistently put the shapes in the right hole on the first try.  She said, "Triangle goes right there," and pointed to the triangle hole then proceeded to put it in.  It's been obvious to us for quite a few months that her language skills are really great, but now she's putting the language together with other skills and she sounds like such a big kid! She just said to me, "That's Doodle's brella, I pick up.  Here you go, Mommy," as she handed Doodle's umbrella to me.

She sings a few songs now: Happy Birthday is her favorite one and she changes who's birthday it is; she doesn't know every letter yet, but ABCs is another one she sings a lot -- she's actually singing it right now sitting on the floor behind me, "ABCDLMNOP"; The Wheels on the Bus (her favorite part is when the babies go waa, waa, waa); Old McDonald; and Take Me Out to the Ballgame.

She asks to go to sleep for naps and at bed time, not every day, but often.  And she means it when she asks, which makes bed time so easy (I'm knocking on wood).  Sometimes when I'm changing her diaper she'll ask for her pacifier (pahfiah) which she only gets when she's going to sleep.  When I say no, she says that she wants to go to sleep, knowing that she has no intention of sleeping.  She's already fibbing to get her way (though I don't let her have her pacifier).

She loves to have books read to her.  She knows a lot of them by name and will ask for specific books.  She loves to talk on the phone to imaginary listeners or real people.  Her memory is remarkable.  When I'm getting her dressed she'll inform me who she got the clothes from, "R's pants, Mom."  She will remark on other things that I had long forgotten about and I'm amazed she remembered or noticed what ever it was.

She's our cutie pie.