Eighteen Months of Awesome

If I had to sum Carmen Mae up in one word it would be "tough". She knows what she wants and she won't let a scraped knee or pesky brother stand in her way. Over the last couple weeks I've taken photos that show our little lady in her element.

 We weren't planning on going to the butcher. But little lady walked right in, pointed at the counter, and walked out with a free sausage. 

She likes to feed herself with utensils. This ice cream shop was trying out different styles of ice cream - this is a trial run of "Spaghetti ice". Ice cream shops make vanilla ice cream look like noodles and then put strawberry sauce on top for marinara. The nice gals at Oak and Ice asked if we wanted some free attempts at Spaghetti ice. #yesplease

She loves any kind of water - swimming pools, baby pools, puddles, and even glasses of water. Whenever our neighbor fills up her pool, she'll jump right in. She'll often climb up on our kitchen table our counter to grab a beverage. This is one of my least favorite aspects of parenting at this phase. 

In her perseverance, she is a little rascal. She went in the boys' room, closed the door, and after a minute I went in to find her standing on my laptop on the desk. I don't think she climbs for the joy of climbing or breaking stuff, I think she just goes for water bottles.

She also loves sweets. Here she is eating homemade cookies by our neighbor Val. Carmen is food motivated; but not motivated enough to sit in a chair in a restaurant which is a good transition into things she isn't into:

This girl doesn't like sitting on the potty. She's been punking me by saying peepee and poopoo but when I put her on the potty, she pops back off. In this photo, her brothers are watching a hot wheels video but videos don't really hold her attention either.

When she's sleepy, she doesn't want to keep going. She wants to go to bed. To let us know, she just lays down on the floor wherever she is - even facedown in the sand. This was our Thursday morning where my chain broke on Rammy and we had to leave the bike near school and train back. Hugo was trying to encourage her but nothing will substitute for a snuggle and nap.

This is "put me to bed" in Carmen's body language.

Her favorite toy, as is usually the case with kids, isn't actually a toy. She loves these silicon muffin tins.  She spends hours staking them around the house. Future Mari Kondo?

We have lots of videos, that don't lend themself to blogging, of her doing her greatest love: dancing. Anytime she hears music she will try to get closer to the source - wether that's going over to a group of half-drunk dudes playing techno in the park or breaking into a restaurant when we're waiting for take-out so she can dance in the back. While I could go on and on about Carmen's lovely attributes, she's up from her nap and I turned around to hear her say "uh oh" doing this: