Sixteen months has changed everything.

For the first 15 months of my daughters life, she was a relatively easy kid. She entertained herself easily, managed to stay out of trouble, was pleasant and not too fussy, and she made me feel like parenthood wasn't as crazy as many people make it out to be.

But over the course of the past 3 weeks, since she turned that fateful 16 months, life as I knew it has been turned upside down.

Now don't get me wrong.... I still love her to the moon and back. She still melts this mama's heart.

But, I'm exhausted.

She's everywhere and into everything. Nothing is safe.... the toilets are now her favorite playground, she climbs all over everything, and she does not sit down! She's learning how to talk... which I once thought was an adorable thing. But suddenly, when one of her favorite sentences is "no!" I'm thinking twice about this milestone. As frustrating as it may be at times, she still makes me smile though when she says it because most of the time it's said in a context that doesn't even make sense.

For example:
"Liana, where's Lovey?"
"No!"

Hmmmm... okay then.

But my favorite Liana-ism right now? "Ooooh Wooow." She says it so cute and so often and I smile every time. I'm not sure if she picked that up from me, but it's her new favorite sentence.

The dogs are tormented. She thinks Moose is her step stool/chair and the poor guy gets mauled constantly. While Bauer's becoming more tolerant of her, he still gets snippy... but who can blame him when she's constantly running him over with stuff?

Every morning, she wakes up and the first words out of her mouth are "Moosh" and "Bauer". Nevermind "Mommy" or "Daddy".... Mike and I definitely know where we stand in her eyes. She tells her boys to "Sit!" and calls for them when they're just not within eyesight.

She's eating with a spoon and a fork and she's actually really good at it.

We're up to 16 teeth now... apparently one for each month she's been born... and I'm praying that the back four molars hold off for a while yet. I've heard those are the worst and I'm not ready for my baby to be in that kind of pain just yet.

Lovey is ragged and disgusting already and she was barely attached to it 4 months ago. We're down to just a few paci's in the house but not because we're slowly taking them away.... no, that would cause for far too much uproar (not to mention the only time my little one stays quiet is when one of those things are in her mouth) but because she carries them around with her wherever she goes and loses them along the way. I refuse to buy more, so hopefully we hang onto the last few survivors for a while longer!!

Bedtime is now around 8pm and she doesn't go down like she once did. Now, we have a whole grand bedtime routine that consists of getting our jama's on, brushing our teeth (which is really just Liana sucking the toothpaste off the brush while Mike or I get a few good strokes in!), reading books, "blowing out" the light, and tucking our munchkin in. While she goes down quietly, within minutes she's squealing in her bed and she usually talks herself to sleep within 20-30 minutes. Naptime however? Still a dream. She goes upstairs, gets a diaper change, and goes down without a care in the world. On a good day she'll sleep about 3 hours... on a not-so-good day I get 1.5 hours to do my stuff around the house or lay down myself (God knows I need it these days).

She LOVES books. I find myself having to buy new ones because I'm so sick of reading all of her other ones over and over and over again. She'll grab one, bring it to me, say "Book!" and then sit herself ever so comfortably in my lap. When it's done, the process starts over again.

I picked up some flashcards at Target's dollar spot and she loves them. She can pick out a majority of the pictures already: cat, dog, zebra, alligator, turtle, ball, heart, horse, pig, lamb, apple, elephant... the list goes on and on.  Some of her other everyday words include: milk, cracker, bye, hi, baby, ball, banana (but said "nana"), book, flower, hat, help, up, down, dog, cat, daddy, mama, nana, papa, bauer and moose. Everyday I find her saying a new word so I know that this list doesn't show all my pumkin has to offer.

Liana weighs about 24 lbs these days and probably measures about 32 or 33 inches tall at this point. She's a tall skinny thing, that's for sure! She runs like it's her job and now loves to run away from me when I ask her to "come here". Better yet, she has this grin that she gets when she knows she's doing something she's not supposed to do (yep, I'm going to have my hands full!) and she gives me the look of, "See what I'm doing Mom? Are you going to try and stop me?"

It makes me cringe just to think about it.

She wants to be held all the time... not because she wants to be close to you, but simply because she wants to see the world from your perspective (and your height). This makes it quite difficult to get much done... like vacuuming or making dinner... which I'll use as the excuse for never doing these things. ;)

She's suddenly become quite the little monkey... climbing onto the furniture (which she loves to jump on), the end tables, up and down the stairs. If you pick her up when she doesn't want you to, she sticks her feet out and puts them on your chest. My little acrobat. :)

(I swear, after 15 months of bliss, just thinking about these things makes me want to run for the hills sometimes!! My mother always said she wanted me to have a child that would give me the paybacks I deserve for being such a difficult baby/child... well, she may have gotten her way after all. Damn.)

Sixteen months is about independence for Liana and exhaustion for her mama. I simply can't keep up. I'm beginning to realize how long my 5 day stretch at home is and how I desperately need more structure to my life.