Ila - 19 months! (yeah, I missed a few!)

 Ila at 16 months

Ila at 17 months

Ila at 19 months

(My 18 month photos of Ila got accidentally deleted off of my camera!!!!  WAHHHHH!!!!!!)

Ok.  So.  You may notice that the background in Ila's 19 month photo is different!  That's because WE MOVED!  More on that later.  But us moving is one of the reasons why it has been MONTHS since I've gotten to sit down and write a blog post.  

The OTHER reason is this:

Don't let that sweet face fool you!  Ila has quite of few nicknames in our house... some of them include "Tiny Terror", "Little Monster" and "Bad Baby".

Always said with love, of course!  

But MAN!  This girl is something else!

For starters, she is constantly on the move.  There is not a moment's rest with her around.  You cannot take your eyes off of her for a second!  A few weeks ago, before she was big enough to climb onto the couch, Dustin called me into the other room to ask me a question.  Ila was preoccupied with a toy so I thought it was safe.  I walked back into the room less than five minutes later, and she had dragged a step-stool (I had been arranging things on shelves) all the way across the room to the BACK of the couch, climbed up it, and flung herself over the back of the couch to get on it.  These days, she can get on the couch without the use of a step-stool, which is pretty annoying because her favorite thing to do is THROW HERSELF OFF THE COUCH ONTO THE GROUND, then grin up at me from her sprawled out position on the floor and say, "BOOM BOOM!  AGAIN?  AGAIN?  AGAIN?"

NO!!!  NOT AGAIN!!!  STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT, STOPPPPPPP!!!!!!

"Why is she trying to kill herself?", I asked Dustin recently.

I mean...

She can't just take a simple picture; she has to be all wild and crazy and try and hurt herself!

When she's not throwing herself off of furniture, she's either emptying a drawer or a cabinet of its contents OR she's standing at the refrigerator crying because she's STARVING even though she ate two bananas and a yogurt five minutes ago.  Girl still likes to eat.  Still crazy.  Because girl is also still really tiny.

Usually I can only take showers when Ila is sleeping, but last week I desperately needed to take a shower before going somewhere.  So I brought Ila into the bathroom with me, shut the door and gave her a basket of toys.  Lots of toys.  She had lots of choices.  I get into the shower.  When I get out of the shower, Ila has found a tub of vaseline in my cabinet.  There is vaseline EVERYWHERE.  Floor, walls, cabinets, new rugs... and coated all over her hair.  I mean, ALL OVER her hair.  I washed her hair four times that day, and it was still so greasy that it looked soaking wet even though it was dry.  It's been 8 days since that incident, and her hair is FINALLY back to normal!

So one time when Eden was 9 months old, she was playing with an empty water bottle while a friend and I sat talking.  When we were done talking and it was time for us to leave, I took the empty water bottle away from Eden and threw it in the trashcan.  Eden had no reaction to me doing this at all.  And I remember my friend being shocked and all, "She doesn't care when you take something away from her?'  And I was like, "Um, no?"  And my friend said, "Wow!  My son would have freaked if I would have just taken something away from him like that!"  And at the time, I remember thinking how strange that was.   Because I was so used to easy-going Eden who was such a go-with-the-flow baby, and I was thought to myself, "What kind of a child would freak out about something like that?"  

Oh!  Pick me, pick me!  

ILA WOULD!

Yeah, so Ila is totally the kind of baby that freaks out if you try to take ANYTHING away from her EVER!  People ask me if I have a hard time getting Eden to share with her little sister.  Um, no.  Ila, however, is completely incapable of sharing.  Ila is my particular child.  Ila is my feisty child.  Just this past Sunday, Ila had a COMPLETE MELTDOWN in church DURING THE SERMON because I gave Eden the green cup of cheerios and her the pink cup of cheerios, and she HAD to have the green cup OR ELSE OR ELSE OR ELSE!  I hate giving into her, but when it's Sunday sermon time... I yanked that green cup out of Eden's hands so fast to give to Ila.  Eden, of course, couldn't have cared less.

Also, she likes to growl at us.  Well at me.  If I tell her the word "no", she growls at me.  Sounds just like a dog or something.  Now, if Dustin tells her "no", she completely loses it and comes running to me to console her.  She does NOT like it when her daddy scolds her!

My brother has already told me that I gave Ila the wrong room in our new house.  "This room is easier to sneak out of.  You should have given it to Eden because you know if one of them is going to try and sneak out as a teenager, it's gonna be Ila."

To sum... Ila can be a little... shall we say "difficult"?  BUT!  We wouldn't want her any other way.  She makes life so enjoyable.  She's so funny.  And she KNOWS she's cute and funny and she's constantly hamming it up for us.  She makes us laugh.  She gives THE BEST hugs.  She wraps those little arms around your neck so tight.  She always says "BLESS YOU!" anytime somebody sneezes which I think it the cutest thing ever.  She's brave and adventurous.  She's sweet and cuddly.

She's so happy.  You know, unless she's mad.  Which happens very quickly.  But I'm still gonna go with happy for most of the time.  

She loves the dogs.  When I open the door to go outside, she'll come running and stand in the doorway screaming, "DOGS!  DOGS!  DOGGGGSSSSS!!!" until they come running.

That's her dog, Blue, on the right.  He's a big boy!

She loves books and is constantly getting them off the bookshelf and bringing them to me.  She plops down on my lap and gets sooooo excited that she starts giggling when we start a book.  Then after about one page, she tosses it aside and runs to get a different book and brings that one to me.  And so on and so on.  I'm actually not sure if I've ever made it through an entire book in one sitting with her.

She loves bath time.

She loves shoes.

She loves Elmo.

She loves to run in circles, stomp her feet, and throw herself to the ground.

She loves babydolls.

She loves to swing.

She's my super spirited little girl, and we couldn't imagine life without her!