Dear Valentina,

Forgive me for not writing this sooner but as I will explain, you’re quite the handful and getting a few minutes out of the day let alone in the evening is next to impossible.

You’re now officially 18 months! You’re not the same little baby anymore. I can’t believe how much you’ve grown in the last 6 months. You bring so much joy with your funny expressions and your sweet smile that I’m not sure how much cuter you can get.

I would love to sit here and list all of the funny things you do and say but I’m not sure I can capture it all…. But we’re going to give it a try.

I think my favorite thing is getting you to make Animal noises. Doggy, Elephant, Monkey, Horse, Sheep, Cat, Cow and Croccodile are the ones you do best! I also LOVE that you growl at dogs when you see them!

Hopefully we’ll get ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ started really soon. You’ve got head, eye, nose, mouth and feet down… we just need to work on the other parts.

You have so much energy that there are days when you DON’T take a nap. For example, last Saturday, you REFUSED to lay down with me and take a nap. You were on the go the entire day. I gave you a bath before we left for dinner. I thought you’d fall asleep before getting to Nonna’s house but you were still awake. By 7pm you were tired but wouldn’t give in. By 9pm you were running around on a sugar high. When we left, you didn’t cry. You very happily put your coat and hat on. By the time we got home (a whole 10 minutes later), you were sound asleep. Keep in mind that you had woken up around 7:30-8:00am

It seems like you’re willing to do that quite a bit lately and that makes it hard for me.. especially being 6 months pregnant. You play with anything and everything which means I’m constantly having to keep my eye open for things you’ve grabbed.

I hate having to put you in a playpen but that’s the only way I can get a shower in. If I knew you’d sit still I would just put some Peppa Pig on but you have a bad habit of standing right in front of the TV then looking for one of mine or daddy’s books to play with.

On this…. your 18th month, you had a rough couple of days around Halloween. I was really looking forward to dressing you up and taking some pictures but a fever and vomiting had us at home for 4 days. Those pesky (last set) molars did a number on you. You were shivering, and throwing up water and saltines. You didn’t have a real meal until day #5. Luckily you recovered the day before Abuelita and Abuelito arrived from Texas. (Although those molars haven’t cut through yet)

With visitors here, your schedule has gotten completely thrown off and there have been days in the last 2 weeks where you didn’t get to bed until 23.00… or even midnight! You were having too much fun but now that Dodo and Abuelita aren’t here anymore, I’m trying to get you back to a normal routine and it’s not working. Therefore, causing me to stay up past 1am (as I type this) to finish this post that I started 3.5 WEEKS AGO!

My Sweet Monkey @ 18 months