A Little Bite of Cupcake {18 Months}

My sweet Cupcake turned 18 months old this week, and she is all girl.

Except for all those bumps and bruises, of course. She's a very rough and tumble kind of girl. She's been beat-up and banged around by a very active older brother and of course, her own toddling clumsiness. But underneath those bruises and black eyes, she is all girl.

She loves to dance and sing. She spins around like a princess and loves to grin at herself in the mirror. She can scale my kitchen table in an instant, and devour whole pieces of chalk at once. She is wonderful. 

She is also talking quite a lot. In fact, in the past two weeks her vocabulary has exploded. Rooster was such a late talker that honestly I'm amazed when that toddling "baby" comes to me and says, "my bow!" with a sense of dramatic urgency. She may be stark naked out of the bath, but the one thing she's got to have is a bow! (Of course, she won't leave it in longer than two minutes at a time! Silly girl.)

She also says, "Mama" just like her brother. They both will be prattling away their {almost} complete gibberish, and I'll be half-halfheartedly ignoring them until I hear, "MAMA." They will both look at me in silence as if to say, "are you listening?" I am now!

Cupcake loves her brothers to pieces. Literally. She is known for randomly tackling her big brother when he's not looking, or kissing Little Bear to the point of smothering him. I'm often called to rescue one of my boys from the over eager "love" of their sister. 

"Come give mommy a kiss instead." I'll tell her. And she obediently comes and places her lips on my cheek, pulls away, and smacks them. "Mmmmahh". It's absolutely perfect. 

Of course, she has a few bad habits as well, and most of them stem from doing everything her big brother does. Everything. I spend most of my day repeating myself. 

Rooster/Cupcake stops hitting your spoon on the table. 

Rooster/Cupcake sit down on the couch. 

Rooster, go sit in time out. 

Cupcake...oh well you go sit in time out too. 

She stomps off to the corner opposite her brother and fake pouts for some wrong she didn't really commit, but if he's doing it, she must do it too. 

However, when I can get her alone, just me and her, she is completely her own person. She loves books, and will sit in your lap for ages, but don't even think about actually trying to read. She doesn't have time for that! She'd much rather flip through the pages at her own speed, often going backwards and forwards again and sometimes upside down. 

She loves playing peek-a-boo and wearing hats. She will sing "deep and wide" over and over, and  is absolutely loves jumping off of things...or at least her version of jumping! She bends her knees, then stands up straight again. Puts one leg out in front of her and promptly falls on her face! 

She puts herself to bed most nights at just a suggestion. "Cupcake are you ready for bed?" "Pappy! Pappy?" "Where is your paci?" "I na-no!" She crawls around her room eager to find her pacifier and hop into bed. 

Keeping her in bed is kind of tricky. She is tall enough to open her door and it's not uncommon for me to find her standing in the hall and grinning at me long after I thought she was asleep. We take her back to bed, and she curls up with her old crib bumper (her comfort object), sticks her bottom in the air, and buries her face in her pillow. "Niiiiight, night" she says in such a sweet voice, I can hardly be mad that it's the 17th time I've had to put her in bed. 

She also loves to count. We often point to things on the page and count aloud with Rooster, and of course, she's picked up on that. She takes her finger and points at nothing in particular and makes the counting sounds, "uh, ooh, ee". It doesn't matter what she's counting, or if she's counted it already, or if there is nothing to count at all. The fun is in just pretending to be big. 

But the more she pretends, the faster she learns and I know one day soon I'll wake up to find that my sweet baby girl isn't so little anymore. I do look forward to the day when we can play princesses and dolls and bake cookies and color with crayons (instead of eating them), but for now I cherish those sweet baby cheeks that those chunky toddler legs. 

Even if they are climbing on the counter...