How about an update on Pumpkin?...

Take a look at that sweet face!

Oh my heart.

Next week, my baby girl will be 22 months old. How exactly that happened, I really don't know.

These days she is changing every day. I walked in from work last night and she immediately points to the stroller on the floor and says, "Fell down."

Well, hello. That's new.

She's replaced "Uh-oh!" with "Oh-no!" Which is way cute.

The mimic stage has definitely hit.

On our way home from the Dallas Zoo a couple of weeks ago, a car pulled out in front of us. Chris said "Dude!" For the rest of the ride home, we giggled as Aubrey Kate continued to repeat "Dude" over and over from the back of the car. It was priceless.

And fairly innocent.

Unlike dinner one night when one of us, and I'm not saying who, said "Crap." Her repeating that was not quite as priceless. But since that's the worst our language gets, we just made a mental note to watch it and she hasn't said it again.

We are making huge strides in the letters, numbers and colors department. I bought a cheap puzzle for the car ride home at Christmas. It has little presents with numbers on them. They go from 0 to 10 and then have math symbols like multiply, divide, plus and minus. She knows all the numbers and all the signs. She just doesn't quite yet know the order. Other than one, two and three. Those we know. Except when we don't and it turns into one, one and one.

Everything was "wellow" even though she could say the other colors. Right up until one day when suddenly all the colors clicked. Now we know "wed", "bue", "geen", "urple", "ange" and "pink". Still working on brown, black and white. She loves to tell me what colors the fish are in "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." And the flashcards with colors and shapes are fun too. Although we haven't learned the shapes yet.

Letters are good too. We know most of the alphabet. Not in order but we can point to a letter and say it. She thinks its a fun game to point to letters in books. She's almost more interested in pointing out letters than reading the story.

We are turning into a good little player too. Some of the toys she's had for a while and would only get frustrated with are now easy and fun. Like the bus with shapes. She can pretty easily fit the shape pieces into the right holes. And the blocks. She likes to take them out of their nesting spots and put them back in. She did that tonight for five minutes or so just talking to herself through it all.

Lesson learned for this mommy there. I had read that kids needed to have toys they could easily figure out. I think I was just trying to make her a little more advanced than her age. She's much happier when she can accomplish a task. That's fun.

Other than that, she's still in love with her naw-naws, babies and Elmo. She wakes up asking for Elmo. Talks about her babies on the way home from school. And wants to point out every naw-naw on every woman she sees.

I have some make-up brushes and hotel sample bottles of lotion in the bathroom drawer. She'll pull out the brushes to put blush on my cheeks. She loves it. She'll also bring us the lotion bottle and put some lotion in our hands. Lotion goes on the babies hands. Elmo's hands. On the highchair. Pretty much anywhere. We rub our hands together and then she runs to the other "target" to give them lotion. It's a cool game.

Last week, she started laying down on her stomach. I saw her doing it while she was playing and then she did it in the bathtub. She even put her face in the water once. She didn't mean to but she handled it really well. Now I can ask her if she wants to go swimming and she'll run to the bathtub. She'll even say "im!" It's precious. And also very easy to wash her bottom.

So basically, I adore her. We both do. We actually started crying one night while we were sitting on the couch just talking about her. Then we laughed at ourselves. We love her that much.