Someone kidnapped my baby.

Someone has kidnapped my baby and replaced her with a grown up little person! Hallie is two weeks shy of being 18 months (nursery age.. finally!!) and I can not believe it. I have just been staring at her the past two weeks in aw. She is becoming so independent and so grown up it baffles me. I can't help but wonder to myself where my little baby girl has gone! There have been a couple things the past months that I have wanted to share about my wee little one. So here it goes.

What sparked this post is what happened on Sunday. Hallie has been able to say "Grandpa" for a while now. Grandpa is Bishop of our ward, so whenever we go to church we come in and sit down and she points and says "papa!" We have been so proud of our little girl being able to recognize grandpa. Well this Sunday rolls around. We walk into church and Hallie doesn't do her usual "papa" ritual. Which didn't phase me. It wasn't until Grandpa stood up to do a musical number that I had forgotten. Grandpa sings in a quartet every couple of months. Well the first three speakers had spoke and now it was the quartet. Grandpa stands up to sing, and with out hesitation, Hallie starts yelling, and I mean yelling, "PAPA! PAPA! IT'S PAPA! PAPA! PAPA!" and she goes on and on. People start turning and just laughing. It is quite hilarious. The people behind us whisper to us, well at least she knows who her grandpa is! There were people coming up to me after Sacrament meeting, who were sitting near the back of the OVERFLOW, commenting on how funny it was. The mic must have picked her up. But as soon as they started singing, she quieted down and started swaying to the music. It was so funny, and my beat red face must have showed how proud I was.

Hallie is also becoming quite a talker. She babbles all the time, but she suprises me by how much she can say. For example, the other day I was up at my in-law's doing something and Hallie walks away and I hear quiet for a few minutes and then some crashing sounds. I walk into Gail's sewing room and Hallie is pulling everything out of her sewing drawers. I very sternly yell, HALLIE! Without hesitation she looks up at me and says, " I DIDN'T KNOW!!" I couldn't help but start laughing, it was hilarious.

Last week when she got up in the morning, had her breakfast, and had a bath she started walking around mumbling something. I couldn't quite make it out. I had never heard her say anything like it before. Suddenly she walks up to her crib points and says BLANKIE! I was floored. I didn't even know she knew that word, and let alone she knew where it was. It suddenly made sense all the events leading up to that that she was saying 'blankie' the whole time, but seriously where did she come from?

Every day she surprises me with something new. I am baffled by how smart she is. I love being her mommy. But can I say how excited I am to take her to nursery in T-MINUS 1 SUNDAY LEFT!