Such a big girl now!

Today, Turner is 16 months old! She has changed immensely since Christmas, with an enormous vocabulary and funny actions that send us into fits of laughter on a daily basis. This stage is the most fun yet, and since things are changing so quickly we wanted to take a blog post to write down some of these events, lest we forget! This post is mainly for our records (and I fear it may be very self-indulgent) but if you want to check out what Turner is doing - read on!

We think that Turner can say around 85 words right now. It is getting to the point that people in public make comments about how verbal she is for her age. Mainly after she waves and says a big "Hey!" to them in the aisles of Wal-Mart - or after she entertains the Sunday School workers with her antics and knowledge each Sunday morning. We are quite proud of how much she communicates with us and other people (it certainly makes life easier when she can say things like "eat eat" when she's hungry) and we do love how she loves books. However it does concern us that at around age 3 we may never get her to stop talking!

Here are some of the words that she can say with regularity and understanding: Moon, Star, Toot toot (anytime we eat spinach - remember the popeye song?!), Mama, Dada, Tootsie, Pop, Goat, Moo, duck, Quack, horse, Neigh, Oink, Pig, Woof woof, doggie, kitty kitty, melow (meow), Mouth, teeth, Nose, eyes, ears, toes, bless you (says it appropriately after you sneeze!), thank you, please, melmo (Elmo), hot, cold, no no, swing, box (mailbox), amen (folds her hands appropriately as if she's praying!), Socks, shoes, Purple, Blue, Bath, Nasty, Plane (and can spot one or hear one anytime it's within 20 miles of AU), Hey, bye bye, Snowman (Noman), Cici (Mrs. Rhonda’s dog), Coat, Juice, Milk, Chicken sticks, Nerner (turner), hair, hat, music, banana, lotion, doctor, medicine, oops, light, Duke (Mark taught her that during basketball season), tiger, shark, rabbit, monkey, squirrel (skirl), bird, turtle, fish, Aubie, necklace, makeup (mikeup), book, mine, paci, car, truck, hello ("Lo?" and holds the phone up to her ear!), clock, britches (yes, that one is my fault), necked (my fault also that it's not pronounced 'naked') fruit, eat-eat, berries (LOVES strawberries), shower, more, zipper (and can identify one), snap, uh-oh, and she gives "uh-oh spaghettios" a really good try!!

Some things she has done lately that have made us laugh:
-Apparently Mark had wiped her nose a few times using his shirt. Later in the evening, Turner came over and wiped her own nose using Mark's shirt (as if that is the proper thing to do! Tonight, she actually attempted to blow her nose!
-Anytime she hears music she starts stomping her feet, turning around, and dancing.
-She has been caught singing with music at home and at church.
-She stands on her caterpillar toy as if it's a balance beam with both feet in line on the caterpillar's back and her hands barely on the handlebars.
-She's going to be a sports lover - she'll see basketball on the tv and shout "YEA!" and clap her hands wildly! If a shaker/pompom is near she'll grab that and go crazy!

Things she can do and things we want to remember:
-How much she loves to be outside!
-The way she crouches down and grins like she's being sneaky!
-How it feels for her hold our hand for help doing something she can't quite do alone yet (such as going up and down stairs - we are close to mastery but not there just yet).
-How it sounds and how she looks when she runs throughout the house.
-That she can already blow kisses and give kisses when asked to.

I know there are things we are leaving off...but we've been saying for a while I needed to get these written down somewhere, so this was the first effort. We'll probably do this every month or so just for our sake - she's changing so incredibly fast!!