16 months and counting...

The other day someone asked me how old Bella is and I had to think about it. And when I finally came up with the answer I realized that we missed her 16 month milestone (hey, I realized the day after and it's not like I missed her birthday. It's also been a little crazy around here getting everything back to normal and getting Dusty ready for school).
She is still growing by leaps and bounds. She cracks us up everyday, it's so much fun. Her new favorite thing to so is run at full speed downhill. I'm not sure why she does this, but she gets going so fast that it looks like she can't control herself. Amazingly enough she hasn't fallen, at least not hard (knock on wood).
Her sense of humor is developing nicely. She definitely knows when she thinks something is funny and she lets you know. If you do something that she thinks is funny, she'll laugh and laugh. That's not saying that if you wait 5 minutes and do the same thing again that she will still think it's funny. She is also very ticklish when she wants to be. When playing and goofing around she is very ticklish, but when she's mad or tied she just gets upset if you try to tickle her.
She loves playing out side and loves to look at and pick up rocks. Maybe this is something that she got from me... Outside the backdoor of our apartment there is a little trail of rocks that the previous tenant put in and Bella loves to look through them all and carry them around. She wants to show them to you and let you hold them. It's very funny.
She loves sitting in chairs and reading her books. She is so proud of herself when she can get up into one of her little chairs and even more proud of herself when she can get up onto the couch to sit next to you. Once she gets into her seat (where ever that might be) she wants you to hand her whatever toy or book that she requests. This tends to work a few times, but as the toys and books become more varied it's hard to tell what she's asking for (and she wants a particular one and anything else won't do). Plus I don't want to be her retriever all day long.
If I ask her to show me what she wants she will go over to it and point to it. This goes for toys, books and even milk and food. I think that if she could get it herself, she would pour herself a cup of milk. When she's hungry she goes and tries to get in her seat at the table, when she wants a drink she'll ask for juice or go to the fridge for milk and when she's ready to take a nap or go to sleep she'll lay on the floor or go in her room and try to get into her bed.
She listens well and most of the time she'll do what you ask her. She usually knows when she's doing something that she's not supposed to do. She knows what NO means, but she still has trouble acting right away if you tell her not to do something (she looks at you when you tell her know and you can tell she's debating if she's going to listen to you).
Her favorite toys are her monkey stuffed animals, baby dolls and balls. And she loves to read all her books, but her favorites are Peek-a-Zoo, 101 Dalmatians and Lift the flap Farm. She's loving having all of her toys back. After being at Grandma and Papa's for the last few months, all of her toys are new to her and she's having so much fun playing with them again.
Some stats:
She's weighing in around 23 pounds (just an estimate).
She's wearing size 4 diapers, but they're still a little bit too big.
She's wearing mostly 18 month clothes. She's still wearing a few of her 12 month outfits, but since most of that stuff is summer clothes she can't wear them anyway, it's too cold here.
She wears a size 4 shoe.