Ella at 19 Months (and a couple of days)

-Weighs 26 pounds and is at least 32 inches tall.
-Wears 18 months shirts and pants and can get away with some 2T not being huge on her.
-Knows her belly, nose, hair, mouth, hands, feet, head, fingers, butt cheeks, and toes
-Calls every animal a puppy
-Idols Hudson and always wants to be with him. Most days she's awake before Hudson, and she immediately goes to his door and starts reaching for the handle while saying his name. I have to do my best to distract her until Hudson is awake.
-Fights with Hudson like craaaazy. They are constantly fighting over toys, sitting on my lap, food, or literally anything else you could fight over
-Kisses the air close to your cheek whenever she gives you kisses. She rarely actually touches your cheek.
-Loves Minnie Mouse. She doesn't really watch tv, but she loves everything that has to do with Minnie Mouse. She's goin to love Disneyland in June! :)
-She does super well at eating with utensils. Of course, she still makes a mess when she eats, but I'm not afraid to give her anything except for cereal with milk. Shas hasn't figured out how to manage something so liquidy on a spoon yet.
-Eats just about anything, but her favorite foods include: strawberries, ketchup, ranch, pizza, hot dogs, bananas, otter pops, spaghetti, and yogurt.
-Just got over a case of double pink eye. It actually didn't seem to bother her very much, which we were grateful for. The thing she hated most about it was getting the drops in both eyes twice a day for a week.
-LOVES when Taylor comes home. She'll watch for him out the front window when it gets close to him coming home, and then she waits by the front door for him to give her a hug once she see him pull up.
-Has to have her blanket and her bottle to go to sleep.
-Sleeps in a twin size bed. For the most part she does great with it. There's only ever been a handful of difficult naps, but they were mainly when something in her routine was changed like trying to get her to go down early before church. She loves and really needed all of the space because she's a bit of a wild sleeper.
-Takes 1 nap a day that is typically around 2 hours or less, and she goes to bed usually at 7 but pretty much always before 7:30. Most days she wakes up around 8.
-Favorite toy is her baby dolls and stroller or anything Hudson is playing with
-She still really doesn't like people, and she especially doesn't like men. She isn't a fan of random people trying to talk to her at the grocery store. When I took her to the doctors for pink eye, the PA asked if she has shown any other signs of sicknesses because she was clinging to me so hard and would barely look at him, so he didn't know if anything else was out of the ordinary for her.
-Because of not liking people she is struggling with nursery-especially one set of nursery leaders. She starts to cry once sacrament meeting ends and screams the second we get close to the door, but I know one day she'll love it.
-Has to give the prayer at dinner every night, and she usually gives 2 or 3 prayers, and they're adorable as can be.
-Her best friend is Emma who lives across the street. She asks for her on a very regular basis, most days before 9 am.

Language

Ella is leaps and bounds above where Hudson was at this age. It's so weird to have a child who actually talks at a normal level for an 18/19 month old, and it's such a relief!

Her most common words and phrases are...

what happened

I stuck

What's that

hi/bye

yucky

here you go

amen

more 

Minnie Mouse

my turn

down

please
heavy

love you

jump

sit

have it

ta da

ya/yes

no

it's cute

baby

thank you

mine

apple juice

ba ba (bottle)

blankey

yummy

pizza

hot dog

ow

hot & cold

ball

Mommy, Daddy, Hudson, Ella, Emma, Gigi, Poppy, Bekah, Grandma

And she can repeat almost anything you tell her to.

The day I took her to the doctors for pink eye.

Hudson's 18 month update can be found here.

October

I took the kids out for donuts on Ella's birthday, and then we went and brought a donut to Taylor at work. The kids were very excited about their donuts

Looking at this first picture to the next and apparently Ella had a bow change during the day haha.

We knew we wanted to do something for Ella for her birthday, but couldn't figure out exactly what to do. We ended up at iJump, and it was perfect!

She got to run and jump until her little heart was content.

It wore her out and made her happy, which is the best combination.

Hudson's favorite activity is a tie between jumping into the foam pits and running up the trampolines so he can slide down them.

On our way home we stopped and got pizza for the birthday girl which is still one of her favorite things to eat.

And another picture from a trip to the zoo because I don't share enough of them on here haha.

Hudson loved to push Ella around the zoo. At least for about 2 minutes until he got distracted and moved on to something else. 

It's a good thing we're never in a hurry when we go to the zoo.

I think this zoo trip was after Ella's one year check up and both kids got shots. 

Hudson was a HUGE baby about his flu shot (limping around and whining for forever after he got it), so this was my attempt to help him walk off the shot.

A random from the month :)

The Wild Adventure Corn Maze in Blackfoot is one of our favorite fall traditions!

It was so much fun this year with Hudson being old enough to walk and tell us where to go.

We let Hudson pick which way we went every time a decision needed to be made, and he loved being in charge. We were lost for pretty much the perfect amount of time.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous when we were in the maze, but naturally it was a super windy day. Which is nothing new for Idaho.

Ella did really well in the stroller which was an added bonus. We weren't sure how well she was going to do just sitting there for a while looking at corn stalks haha.

Hudson was big enough this year to go on the zip line.

He loved it and kept wanting to go again and again.

After the corn maze we came home, did some yard work, and then attended a birthday party for one of Hudson's little friends.

The whole day must have worn Hudson out because we came home from the party, got him in his jammies, and then not even 5 minutes into watching sports with dad he was passed out.

Elephant helped make pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with us.

Trying to take a picture of a toddler like....

I have no idea why this picture was even taken, but one day I'll miss this chaotic time in our lives when we miss more of the sacrament talks than we hear them, so I might as well post it.

We had a freak snowstorm one day that dumped like 4 or 5 inches overnight which is why there is snow in the background of this picture.

While Taylor was cleaning one or both of the cars out the next day the kids decided to take the tractor out on one of it's last drives for the year.

Thankfully, the snow melted in a couple of days because we were so not ready for it!

We don't normally attend any of the events that Chik-fil-A puts on because it's always suuuuper crazy and busy, but for whatever reason we made an exception when they did a pumpkin painting night.

I'm not sure if Hudson loved painting the pumpkin or eating french fries more.

I took the kids on a little lunch date to Sam's Club. 

I'm sure we also needed to pick something up, but we love a good excuse to treat ourselves to the food court haha.

Mr. Bones Jones joined our family this past October. He spent most of the month sitting at the dining room table, but towards the end of the month we started 

Trying to get a picture of Ella's outfit the Sunday before Halloween hahaha.

While scrolling through facebook one afternoon Taylor came across someone selling a practically brand new trampoline for a super good price. 

Taylor went to the people's house, took it apart, and then came home and set it back up.

It was a bit cold on the day we bought it, so we bundled the kids up so they could play while we put it back together. Ella might have been a little over dressed for the temperatures, but she sure was cute.

The kids had a blast playing on the trampoline for the few warm days that were left of fall.

This spring it was like a brand new toy again because they forgot we ever bought it which was kind of nice haha.

Boo at the Zoo!

I'm pretty sure this was the first sucker Ella ever had.

She was turning into a mega grump, so the sucker couldn't have come at a better time.

Hudson obviously picked out the Halloween costumes this year.

Hudson went as Lightning McQueen, and Ella went as his pit crew.

I added the black tutu to her costume to make it at least a little bit girly.

I took the kids trick or treating to a couple of houses, and we went to our ward's trunk or treat for a little while. He was pretty thrilled to be getting all of this candy. Instead of saying trick or treat he said "trick and treat" every time.

Our neighbor, Will, came over and scared the heck out of Rebekah and Emily while I was trick or treating with Hudson. They called the cops and everything, so that was fun hahahaha.

Unfortunately, Taylor missed out on Halloween this year because he was away at a 4 day long training for work in Logan, Utah.

He was still able to make it to Boo at the Zoo and a few other Halloween events so it wasn't too big of a deal to have him gone on the actual holiday.

Of course, this training was just days before we left for our big trip to Disneyland. So that was fun to prepare for the trip without any extra help..