portrait of my 18 month old

Arabella Jun is going to be giving her Dad and I gray hair and heart attacks until, well, probably forever. This girl has lived up to her "spirited baby" title and now she's graduated to "spirited toddler". She can throw a tantrum like no other. She likes to stand and lean backwards on the couch so her upper body is precariously leaning over the edge. She likes to dance on the coffee table, bounce in the bathtub, leap off stairs, run in a crowd. ("How dare you hold my hand?"), smack the dog, and stand in the rocking chair while it's rocking. She likes to do everything by herself. She doesn't want any help using her fork or brushing her teeth, coloring, reading a book, stacking the blocks. "Don't you dare help me!". Bella's temperament is displayed well in her moments of mayhem at night when she wakes up screaming, then screams even harder when we try to pick her up and comfort her. "How dare you soothe me!?"

She's still having issues choking on things but it's not for lack of teeth. She has four molars now. Mostly the issue is that she shoves fist-fulls of food in her mouth and tries to swallow before she's sufficiently chewed them. I'm afraid Justin's going to start requiring her food to be pureed if she chokes any more.

Another gray hair inducing trait she's developed is cyanotic breath holding during intense crying. Basically after a fall or injury she'll scream and then do that silent cry for so long that she passes out. Immediately after she looses consciousness (we can tell because she goes from tomato red to pale as a ghost) her body involuntarily takes a breath and she starts crying again. After these episodes she's kind of tired and woozy. It was really scary the first time but now we know to expect it if she falls or hurts herself. It by no means happens all the time but if she really gets whaling and moves into that red faced silent cry we know now to keep her horizontal so the blood can flow to her head and blow in her face to help her snap out of that silent cry/breath holding. We kind of chalked it up to Bella being Bella. She's just that kind of kid.

Even with all her challenging traits, she is equally amazing in every way. She's playful and has this adorable deep chuckle laugh that is completely infections. She loves doing everything with her big sister even if Addie gets exasperated with her sometimes. Arabella is feisty and curious and fearless. Her smile lights up the room.

On most days Bella is running around hiding behind the curtains and jumping off the couch cushions at 6PM. By 7PM she's curled up in her blanket, on my lap, squealing at each page of "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?", and then kissing her stuffed animals goodnight. Our youngest daughter may be graying us prematurely but she's an absolute delight.