If you ask Julia whether or not she’s a baby or a big girl, she will always tell you she’s a “beeg gurwl.” At 18 months old, she’s pretty advanced in her speech, even the doc says so. Over the last few months, I’ve been really stressing over what she eats. At her 15 month appointment, she hardly gained one whole pound and the pediatrician said that if she didn’t gain more next time, they night have to run some tests to see why.

Luckily, she’s shot up two whole inches and gained a pound and a half. So all is good! Her first Trick or Treat has gone by. She dressed in her fairy costume and went around with her pumpkin. We started out well. She went up to our neighbor, Kim, and said “teek teet” (trick or treat) and looked at the candy as Kim gave her some. By the time we were almost done, she was walking up to people, taking candy herself, reaching up to me, and once I picker her up, she wrapped her legs around me, pointed and said, “Go! Go!”

I’m SO not even kidding. I’m not exaggerating. I’m completely serious.

She’s starting to show her baby dolls what things are. For example, she took the baby outside, shoved it’s face in the grass and said “gass!”

There’s another Julia in our neighborhood who is two months older than our Julia, but she hardly speaks at all. Her mom said she wished her Julia talked like mine, so I told Jules to go tell Julia to talk. So she took her toy pig and bunny, walked over to the other Julia, showed her the pig and said, “piggy!” She showed her the bunny and said, “bunny!” Then she patted the bicycle next to her and said, “bike!”

She’s the best kid ever made. She’s brilliant. Today in the Disney Store, she saw the new Beauty and the Beast tea tray and set. It’s on wheels. She grabbed the display and started pushing it all over the store periodically stopping to serve tea. Let’s just say, if you have no idea what to get her for a present, pretty much anything in the Disney Store will do. Handy Manny toys, princess toys, tinkerbell, Shang (Mulan’s prince), Mickey… Just know that we already got her the toy Handy Manny with tools.

Oh, and she found a kid-sized wingback chair in Target. Enjoy.

In other news, I just won 24 free classes at my pole dancing studio! I rock.

Julia just said “I love you” to me for the first, second, third, AND FOURTH time while hugging tight to my arm and patting it.

A few mornings ago, when I had almost finished my morning coffee, Julia asked for a “nanny” (banana). So I set my coffee cup down on the table where she was playing with her tea set to turn around and grab a banana, right? When I turned back around, Julia had taken my coffee cup, poured some into her tea cup (without making a mess!) and was sitting there drinking it, saying “coffee! coffee!”

This girl is amazing. She is so incredibly smart! She has a book of animals. There are 26 and she can tell you what 24 of them are. She knows all of her colors. She can tell you what a square, triangle, circle and line are and can draw a line and circle when asked.

She can tell you which book she wants you to read now, whether it’s Madeline, Listening Walk (Walk), Princess stories (Peencess), Stone Soup (Soup), The Big Red Barn (Barn), Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (Star), or her “Ay, Eee, C’s” book. Sometimes she doesn’t want you to read them, sometimes she would rather read them herself:

She can tell you want movie or show she wants to watch: Garfield, Bell (Tinkerbell), King/Hoggle/Sarah (The Labyrinth), Elmo, Manny (Handy Manny), Movers (Imagination Movers), Mickey, etc. etc. I won’t list them all because I’m sure you don’t want to read a long paragraph of movie titles.

We got her a potty and she’ll sometimes sit on it fully-clothed and say “pee pee! poo poo!”

I let her pick what color shirt she wants to wear in the morning. And she takes her baby doll and feeds it with a bottle. Or opens her little couch and puts the baby on it saying “seep, baby seep” or “poo poo, diaper.” Did I mention that her baby must have a diaper on at all times? yeah. And when Julia poos, she asks for a wipe to clean her doll’s diaper.

She’s starting to learn her letters and her numbers. She’s only just 18 months old! I didn’t know a 17 month old could do all this. The Other Julia’s mom and dad wish that their Julia could talk like her. We have a wiz kid.

Another of her favorite pass times is to sit in the chair in front of this computer and watch a slide show of herself at Hilton Head.

Julia "heppan" helping, originally uploaded by stephylewis.

Today, Julia got to go apple and pumpkin picking for the first time. She had so much fun. More photos to come. Until then, here is Julia helping (hhhehpan) take the pumpkin guts out.

she looks older than 17 months, originally uploaded by stephylewis.

Today Julia turned 17 months old. She looks more like 17 years old. I just had to share. This is from the playground this morning.

What a month.

Julia’s vocabulary has totally skyrocketted. Get this. She loves to play rock band on the Wii. She either sits at the drums and plays or she steals the microphone, puts it to her mouth and sings “doo doo doo.” I’m hoping to get it on film tonight.

This month we took Julia to the beach for the first time. And she LOVES it. She wants to go back to the ocean so much. She saw turtles and rode in the elevator (ahvah) everyday.

Now that we’re back at home, she asks to go “shoom, mommy, car” so we can go to the “mall! horsey!” and ride the carousel. She has a favorite horse on the carousel. Now, when we go to the pay area in the mall, she’ll be in there for a couple of minutes, and then she makes a beeline for her stroller and spends the next 15 minutes climbing in and out of it. Then she wants to go on the horsey again.

She’s got all of her one-year molars now.

Oh, and this is BIG. I can finally let her climb all over the jungle gym at the playground and MOMMY DOESN’T FREAK OUT ANYMORE. Oh happy day.

Also, last night when I went to pole dancing class…. SHE DIDN’T CRY!

I would put more photos in, but they’re ALL from the beach. If you haven’t seen her first haircut, check this out:

Adorable right?

This is my favorite current thing, Julia’s version of the word “cold”:

Or I would only have about 10 photos of Julia this month! Go Jocelyn!

This morning I woke up to a nice cool, crisp first-day-of-school morning. It was fantastic except for this weird feeling that was nagging at me. Kind of like an old memory of being really sick for a long time when the summer was just turning. I couldn’t place it for about 10 minutes because I can’t remember every being THAT sick. Then it hit me. It was the feeling I had for the last few months of working at the Catholic Review. I would wake up sick to my stomach every morning before I quit. It was dreadful.

Now I’m concerned that this is the “nostalgic” memory that will hit me every fall instead of the excitement of back to school and band camp. Because I LOVE when summer turns to fall. I LOVE when I can sleep with the windows open again and hear crickets. I don’t want it to be spoiled.

Anywho. On to other things. Time to catch y’all up on more than just baby!

I’ve been doing a lot of freelance work at Studio Lewis Graphic Design. Lately I learned a lesson that it’s better to not work with certain clients. I’m still trying to convince myself that the thousands of dollars I would have earned wouldn’t be worth the pain of dealing with this particular client. Joe made a very good point in comparing it to the Catholic Review (which, interestingly enough, this particular client used to work there). It’s a really difficult thing to be a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t bring home any money (in fact, spends it on sorts of things, no matter how useful) and have that potential money taken away.

So much guilt.

Back to Julia.

She’s sitting here in my lap saying “on! on! on! Mama off! on! on!” I have no idea what she wants on.

Julia has been very active this month. She’s starting to repeat words she hears once. She can’t count, but she knows how many “two” is.

I can’t thank Jocelyn enough for taking photos and making them available for downloading, because if it wasn’t for her… really… I wouldn’t have many Julia pictures. here are some of her and Daddy:

And now we’re making preparations to go to the beach for a full week. The beach will be fun. I’m trying to think of all the things that will make an 11 hour car ride bearable with a 16 month old.

That’s about it for now. Julia is trying to pull me out of the chair and whining. Until after the beach!

Julia eats her breakfast all by herself now. She will NOT accept help from mommy (unless you count me making the food, serving it, and putting her in her chair). She’s growing up so FAST!

In addition to this, she’s also suddenly expanded her vocabulary to include: Elmo, Huxley (the bad guy in Elmo in Grouchland who also happened to play Indigo Montoya), arm, help (which sound a little too much like “up”), bah-ee-ooooh (balloon), blue, chalk, airplane, key, bubble, apple, bra (one of her favorites), no, that, and I’m sure there are more, but I can’t think of them. That comes to a grand total of about 30 words for a 15 month old! Go Julia!

She likes to pick out her own outfit in the morning. She doesn’t want to go for walks in her stroller, she wants to go for big girl walks next to mommy or daddy. She’s tall enough to see out the windows without standing or sitting on anything!

She’s becoming a pickier eater now that she’s learned the word “no.” She’s down to one nap a day.

She’s starting to climb on things and can tickle people on command.

I’m trying to expand her movie knowledge beyond Elmo. She likes the Fraggles. I want to get her into Disney movies, but it’s proving difficult. Most especially since Disney only releases a few movies at a time. Boo on them.

Ok, one of us has to get a shower so Julia can go out and play!

Oh, did I mention that she’s 15 months old now?

A better look at my new purple hair., originally uploaded by stephylewis.

Behold. My new violet tresses. I found some demi-permanent hair color and chose purple, of course. I LOVE it. It makes my eyes REALLY green. Unfortunately my hands and ears were also sacrificed to the purple gods.

Hidy Ho to the Internets! Yeah. Sorry I’ve been away so long. You see, Julia had developed a sixth sense. Whenever my butt touches the chair in front of the computer, I suddenly hear the pitter patter of little feet running over to me. Then she starts to cry. Apparently it’s a very traumatic sight, me sitting at the computer.

Julia is now 14 months old. Behold:

That’s right, Julia wants YOU.

Keep in mind that I started this post a couple of days ago and haven’t been able to get back to it until now.

Julia has a handful of garbled words in her vocabulary including:

• Meemee (mommy)
• Dadum (daddy)
• pop-pop (popcorn or anything that goes in the microwave)
• uh-oh
• purple
• thank you
• hi
• dye dye (bye bye)
• hat
• hot (accompanied with a mouth blow to differentiate from hat)
• up
• yesh
• trash

She knows and can tell you what the following say:

• dog
• cat
• owl
• pig
• The Count from Sesame street

She knows how to get to the potty and the playground and Connor’s house. And if you ask if she wants ice cream, Oh. My. God., she gets so excited.

She loves to wear hats and if she sees one, she says Hat over and over until you put it on her head. If there is a second had in the vicinity she insists that you wear it.

Lately, she’s been trying to put her own shoes on.

During the day, there are several times when she picks up her purse, cell phone and keys, puts the purse on her shoulder and says “bye bye” while waving and starts to go to the front door.

She is JUST. LIKE. ME.