A trip to St Louis, Sydney at 18 months

The weekend before this one we went to St Louis for a visit to check out Ryan & Christy's new place & celebrate Ryan's birthday. We went to the park & fed the ducks bread. They were quite aggressive. We even saw a duck with only one leg, and another with a fish hook stuck in its head. Christy appropriately called him "TJ HOOKER". They didn't seem to mind their situation, and enjoyed the bread along with the rest. They were so aggressive, that I held Syd most of the time so they didn't clobber her. She wasn't really frightened, just a little concerned at times. She really wanted to eat the bread, but it was quite old & we managed to keep it out of her mouth & only in the ducks.
At Ryan's birthday everyone enjoyed the Wii. Here's Sydney having no idea what to do with the controller in her hands.
Trevor & Sydney were wonderful cheerleaders for the wii bowlers.
Syd pretty much squealed at the top of her lungs for a good hour straight. A good time was had by all. Here are Sydney's 18month Baby Parade Picts. I probably won't take another until she's 2, but boy is she growing!
1 month3 months 6 months9 months12 months 15 months

Here she is telling me "all done" with her mouth & her hands.

Its quite tricky to get her to sit still for pictures these days. We're taking some professional ones in 2 weeks, so I hope this new lady is really good at taking toddler pictures!Smile! Peek-a-boo
Sydney is climbing on everything, but at least she's good enough now not to do much falling. The beginning of this phase was a little scary!
Oh, and the mini-temper tantrums are still in effect. Jeff and I try to hold our ground & be firm with the rules, but it would really be easier just to give in sometimes. Like, for example, we gave in for a brief moment on the bubble machine being inside the house. The trick was that Jeff hadn't used it before, so he grabbed it & started using it inside the house. I figured it wasn't fair to tell her no right after seeing Daddy do it, so I documented this one time she got to use the bubble machine in the house. And trust me, Jeff and I are on the same page now, it was a one time thing! Sydney's "baby" has become a major part of our daily & nightly routines. Some days more than others, but this night Sydney even wanted to put her baby in her crib & then get in with her. She really likes it when her baby is swaddled (ironic because Syd hated being swaddled as a baby). She likes to take her to the changing table & say "dipr, dipr, dipr" so I will change the baby. Baby also gets put in the empty tub before Sydney's bath time, and Baby also gets to eat in the highchair. The only thing Sydney's not keen on sharing with her Baby is the strollers, her's and the toy ones. At night Sydney takes off Baby's clothes, puts them back on, asks me to swaddle her, and then we rock her & sing her songs. Once Baby is ni-night, then we can finally start Sydney's routine.

I've got some videos I need to post, but its been so long I'll be forever editing them down to blog-size.