20 months

What can I say about Ms. Ella at 20 months old?  Funny & very busy.  She's got a mind of her own & can really throw a tantrum if she doesn't get what she wants.  She keeps us smiling, always laughing with the biggest belly laugh & so ticklish we can hardly put lotion on her feet.  She definitely wants to be my little helper also, and I often have 2 little ones fighting over little chores to do, like putting laundry in the washer & dryer or wiping up things off the floor.  Ella also seems to have inherited my OCD & just can not stand for toys, books, or clothing to be out of place.  She will get so upset until things are back in their rightful place.  She also really dislikes it when the baby proof locks on my kitchen cabinets are not locked, she will stand there & try to lock them all herself, finally, giving up & yelling until we put them back together.  She loves the dish washer & would crawl right in if we let her.  If she's not running through the house naked screeching or laughing as loud as she can, she's sitting at the island in the kitchen eating (a lot)!  She really only sits in her high chair if she's really hungry & just wants to get business done.  She's wild!!  She can now climb up on our bed & jump around like a little monkey.  Often, she and her sisssy like to do this while making monkey noises.  She is finally patient enough to sit through most books & we spend a good amount of our days reading books.  She especially likes when I point to something & she tells me what the object is. Her vocabulary continues to amaze me, we are continuing to work on her colors, she's got purple down, but the others are hit & miss depending on the day.  She can count to 3, which I think is pretty good.  Her hair continues to be curly in back & the front has gotten so long we must put a little piggy tail in it everyday to keep it out of her face or put a bow in, which may or may not last.  She loves to carrying one of my old purses around & will tell us bye-bye as she totes it around the house.  She also loves to pretend to talk on the phone, she almost always says it's Dada on the phone when asked, but sometimes it's one of her babies or one of her stuffed animals.  She likes baby dolls a lot more than Jessie.  She also likes getting dressed up for church or for anything really.  One of her favorite jobs is to help me get the mail, I hold her up to grab the mail from the mailbox & then she always gets to carry a non-important letter to the kitchen & put it on the counter.  Although, the allergy medication seems to have helped, she still continues to wake at night or early morning...going for a test for cat allergy as soon as everyone is well enough around here for that just to be sure she isn't allergic to Kitty Jenkins (that's kind of aside, but thought I'd put it in for the grandparents).  She enjoys art & has become quite the little finger painter.  She's the trouble maker in the bath & really gets splashing at night.  Despite the fact, it makes a huge mess, she laughs so hard & it is kind of funny!  If you ask her how she slept when you go to get her from the night or a nap she always says "good".  We are slowly working on potty training & she does wear cotton training pants a good amount of time throughout the day.  She has had several totally dry afternoons & some progress with #2, but it truly seems to come more easily to her than it did with Jess, so I'm not worried (probably, because I have a better idea of what I'm doing :).  That's about all I can think of to update everyone on our little girl, can't believe she'll be 2 in May--where did the last year go, it seems like a few weeks ago I was planning her 1st birthday.  Enjoy a few snapshots of our little darling from yesterday & have a great day!