Making Mischief at 18 months

 Eva turned 18 months in December.  She is rapidly making the transformation from baby into little girl, and that little girl is full of mischief.  Eva cannot pass up the opportunity for a good mess.  This morning she emptied out a carton of raspberry jam.  Yummy!!!

 Eva has a fascination with shoes.  She loves stealing everyone's shoes and clomping around the house in them.  But I think Daddy's shoes are her favorites.  Big sister Leah is her favorite pal and she loves trying on Leah's dress up clothes and necklaces with her as well.

 Our Christmas tree was another source of great entertainment for Eva.  I thought that I could put the little soft ornaments and bows down on the bottom branches and decorate the upper branches with more precious ornaments.  That lasted about 1 day before Eva had removed all of the ornaments from the bottom branches.  She also went after the lights and the bows on the presents but we just kept putting those back on.

This Christmas I did a lot of baking for the Mom and Me Bake Shop that the older kids and I run so our mixer was out of it's storage space a lot.  Eva claimed it as her own little hiding spot.  She would crawl into the cupboard, close the door, and just play in there.  Sometimes she got a little upset when the mixer had to go back into "her spot."  Eva flashes that cheesy grin and gets away with a lot.

If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then Eva adores each member of our family.  She copies our words and actions with her own little twist that makes it soooo funny.  Both Kris and I like to read the newspaper in the morning at the breakfast table and Eva decided she wanted to know what was so interesting.  Mom caught the flu over Christmas and had a terrible cough.  One time after a coughing fit, Eva hunched over and let out her own string of "hack, hack, hacks."  Eva follows the bigger kids around the house wanting to do whatever they are doing.  She loves to dance in the kitchen during our Spotify party while we do dishes or grab anyone's phone and say "Hello, hello."  She has the finger swipe down on both mom and dad's phone and is getting pretty hand with the stylus to dad's iPad as well.  Being cooped up during the cold weather has been hard but Eva likes to keep active by playing balls or riding the stick horses downstairs, playing Ring Around the Rosies and Duck, Duck, Goose, reading stories with mom, and playing toys with the other kids.  Eva's vocabulary is rapidly expanding and she says about 30 words.  At her Dr's appt she was 34 in. and 25.6 lbs.