"PLEASE!": a 16 month Lauren update

This picture is from tonight, eating at the Stadium Club at Dodgers Stadium.

This past month has been a big milestone leap for Lauren. She is talking so much more now than ever before. Everything is "please", and she attempts to pronounce words if you ask her to. For example, tonight she called Steve "Sheve" and Helen was "Hawen". She still loves her "Courteous Kids" books and still says "please" in a really cute way when she means "yes, please". It's really funny when she says "peas, please" because she pronounces it "peas, PEAS!" . She also says "milk, please", which sounds like "muk, peas" and now pronounces "down" perfectly.

She loves this certain playground afew miles from our house with castle turrets and lots of older children. She goes right up to the other kids and says "hi" to them. A few days ago, we took her to the circus and her cousins (Ryan's cousin's kids) Josh & Megan were there. Josh is 7 and Lauren adores him. She gives him kiss after kiss, on the cheek. (She also did this when she saw him at the OC Fair.) When she was watching the circus, she pointed to the tigers and said excitedly "cat, cat!" and at the trapeeze artists, "Whee!". Her 2 favorite parts were the parade of clowns and the end, walking out of the stadium, when we let her go down the stairs "like a big girl" holding Megan's hand.

I bought her a "No Slippy Hair Clippy" and I must say, they do stay in a child's hair, unless that child wants to pull them out on her own. Ahem. $9 down the drain about one hour after I'd purchased it. This was a few weeks ago, and insanely, I bought a few more today. I've decided to only use them right before she'll be photographed. She's going to a wedding next weekend and this morning I tried on her party dress to make sure it fits. It did, and she did not want to take it off. She kept going to the closet and pointing to it and saying "this, please" so instead I picked out 3 other party dresses which were not dry-clean only and let her choose one of those to wear (she picked the "lalow"dress from Charles & Amy, see picture above). Tomorrow is Ryder's ("Ry-Ry"'s) birthday party and she can wear another party dress then if she decides to. Such a girly-girl!