18 months

Well, I guess I should stop saying "baby" now that Violet is 18 months old. A couple of weeks ago, we went to visit Melanie and baby Heather at the Burbank mall, and Violet had a blast. She ran and climbed all over the place.
Speaking of climbing, Violet is easily able to climb up on the chairs now. We're trying to make sure she doesn't stand on them, which is hard since we allow Cora to stand on the chair to put away the cutlery (one of her jobs) or help with cooking. In this photo, Violet pushed the chair over to the pantry. And once this month, I've caught her trying to get a leg over her playpen side. Uh oh!
This month, Violet has grown more attached to her seahorse and her "night night." She always holds on to seahorse as she falls asleep, to the point that I need to pick up a backup soon! She threw it in the toilet the other day, and with the soft cover was in the washing machine at naptime, she really struggled to get to sleep.
And, Violet with two of her favorite things - her night night and her sister. At this point, Violet definitely would have a hard time going to sleep without her pacifier/dummy. We try to make her keep it in her bed, and sometimes she has a fit about that. Generally it's not a problem, but since I didn't face any of this with Cora, I do wonder if we'll have trouble in future months when we need to break the night-night habit. Still, since we always have an upcoming big airplane trip, I'm happy that she has a comfort for the flight.

Violet also still loves her sister, as long as Cora doesn't have something Violet wants. Then we have screaming. Lots of screaming this week from our toddler! Sometimes we can get the screams to turn into laughter if we start howling, and then she'll join in. And singing helps too - she especially likes Stace to play "Old MacDonald" on his guitar.

But back to the sister love - Cora has had some fits of her own this week, leading to time in the chair/corner. Violet will try to comfort her, going up to her and offering hugs and love. It brings me to tears to watch.
And, Violet's third favorite things - her aggums. The word, by the way, (sometimes pronounced "alcomb") now means all animals except for dogs. We were pointing out the animals in a book, and Violet was also pointing them out: "Aggum... Aggum... Aggum." It was super cute and I wish I had been videoing it. Her inflection was exactly the same as ours, when we're naming different animals.

In other speech news, I must say that Violet has not progressed much this month. She still says the words she's been saying, but she's added some random (baby talk) phrases that she'll use whenever we ask her to try a new word. Saying that, she has added the word "yeah" to her repertoire, so she can answer in the affirmative out loud, and not just by nodding.

Eating-wise, some good news - after a couple of months of being picky, Violet has become a good eater once again. At some meals, she out-eats her sister.