Fifteen Months!

Stupid, useless gate.

Until we get the gate lowered, I'm back to following Cecilia around all damn day so I figured I'd pull out the camera and document how she spends her time as a fifteen month old (almost anyway).

A lot of her time is revolved around Brother. She likes to steal his sippy cups, stand in his way, play with him, bring him books, take them away, etc. Most of the time he plays right back with her. Gotta say, I'm pretty much in love with this picture:

And this one, but for an altogether different reason:

Much of her time these days is spent walking around with giant shoes on. Much to my dismay, she WILL. NOT. keep her own shoes on. Drives me nuts. But the big shoe thing is pretty cute:

When she's not stealing shoes, you might find her looking at books. She doesn't have a big attention span for having them read to her quite yet, but she sure loves to have them in her hands and look at the pictures. I did read the entirety of Brown Bear, Brown Bear to her yesterday. We're getting there!

And the rest of her time is mostly spent wandering. She walks from thing to thing, place to place with no apparent rhyme or reason. Hopefully she will be a champ at playing independently like her big brother; so far she seems to be well on her way!

Cecilia started walking as her primary mode of transportation sometime in her twelfth month, but it wasn't until this week that she started standing up on her own. She would always walk on her knees or crawl to something to help her stand up and then walk wherever she needed to go. So I guess now she is really walking, which is great because this means we can play outside a lot easier. 

Love that little butt:

She still mean mugs people all the time, and as a result people ask if she "just woke up" all the time. Almost every day someone asks me this. It's actually kind of funny. I think they ask this because she is NOT going to smile for you just because you're smiling at her. This has been a personality trait of hers forever and it has not changed. I'd be worried about it, but this looks like a happy enough kid to me:

She also still messes with people all the time by picking and choosing who she wants to hold her. She will bat you away and say "NO!" and then snuggle with whoever has her just to twist the knife. Next thing you know, she is in your arms denying the person who just had her. Funny thing is, when it's your turn to get the love you cannot help but instantly melt. She's a little manipulator.

She's all smiles in these pictures, but she's recently developed a witching hour. As soon as 4:00 hits she seems to lose her mind over everything. Bryan cannot get home soon enough, for either of our sake's. All hell breaks loose if she sees him and he has to walk out of the room without her for any reason. Her tantrums are so ridiculous, and they are getting less cute the older she gets. Her tantrums at bath time are particularly note worthy...washing her hair is a slice of pure hell. Simon yelled at me for yelling at her during our last bath battle. I realize that yelling at a 14 month old doesn't make much sense, but there is something about her trying to jump out of the bath mid-rinse that makes me just want to yell. Anyone want to take this job over for me for a while? :)

She is starting to talk a bit and that squeaky little voice just kills me. She has about 10-15 words that she uses sort of regularly and I get excited every single time a little word sneaks out. The ones we hear most are no, uh oh, dada, si (simon), hi (pictured below), hello (ALWAYS with her hand up to her ear), and thank you. Note "mama" still didn't make the list. Punk.

She is a busy little lady, exactly how she should be. 

We are so lucky.