Eden - Seventeen Months

In the past month, Eden has started holding my hand.  This doesn't sound like a big deal, but to me it is!  In the past, I would try to hold her hand while she walked around, and one of two things would happen.  She would either just refuse and continue on her merry little way, or she would decide that she wanted me to pick her up and carry her.  All or nothing.  But just recently, while she walks around outside exploring, she will let me hold her hand.  Then, a couple of weeks ago, she was about ten feet ahead of me walking in the front yard, and she stopped and turned to me and held out her hand to me.  I seriously had no idea what she wanted.  I even turned around to see if she was gesturing to something behind me.  Finally it dawned on me that she wanted ME.  I hurried over to her and she took my hand in hers and we continued exploring the front yard together.  Her reaching out for my hand made my top five favorite Eden moments of all time.

When I took Eden in for her one year check-up, she could say four words - mama, dada, ball and Pops (she loves her Pops).  The doctor told me that by eighteen months her vocabulary would reach about fifty words, and I remember standing there getting so excited by that.  Five months later, and that doctor was right.  I have lost track of how many words she says and/or responds to.  My favorites still have to be all the animal sounds she does.  She's been doing "fly, fly, fly" when you ask her what a bird does for months now.  But now she also says "swim, swim" when you ask her fish, "ruff" when you ask her dog, "mew" when you ask her cat, and last week, my mom taught her "bawk" for chicken.  I'm pretty sure Dustin and I ask her to do these animal sounds for us at least twenty times a day.  It's just so cute.  We were asking her all the animals the other night, and I told Dustin that she was probably sitting there thinking, "Crap, I have to do the freaking chicken for them again!"

If I had to describe Eden in one word, it would be happy.  She is happy ALL THE TIME.  She smiles.  She laughs.  At everything.

And the best part?  She's mine.  And I feel like the luckiest person in the world to get to say that.  I see how many people just absolutely adore her, but at the end of the day, I am truly, truly blessed that I am her mom and I'm her favorite person and I get to tuck her into her crib at night.  It never gets old.

She played hard this morning.  She fell asleep for her nap before I even got her shoes off.