Ben at 17 months

Our little Ben is rapidly turning in to a little boy.  He definitely still has his baby qualities about it, but it seems as though every day he’s breaking out of the “baby” mold.

Ben is getting a lot better at communicating lately.  He now points all the time for what he wants and he’s added shaking and nodding his head, along with his pointing which is quite helpful.  He sometimes gets his “uh-huh’s” and “uh-uh’s” mixed up so you think he’s telling you no when he’s actually telling you yes.  He now barks every time he sees a dog and he LOVES dogs.  He wants to touch any and all that he sees.  He says “cookie” now, which is more like coo-kay.  It’s adorable.  I could listen to him say that all the time.  He says “Ah-boo” for Abbie also.

Speaking of Abbie, they have a love-hate relationship.  He LOVES to chase her around and try to copy everything she does.  Sometimes she loves it, sometimes she hates it.  She tends to view him as her little play puppet and he’s getting to the stage where he doesn’t always comply with what she wants him to do, so then she gets mad and so does he because she tries to make him do whatever she wants to do.  He loves to climb things and he’s much more brave about doing physical things that Abbie was at this age.  He’s pretty much running and loves to run away from you now and he climbs on everything.  He’s managed to get on the couch by himself a few times and then he likes to jump on the couch which drives me nuts.  He’s fallen off once, but apparently that wasn’t enough to stop him from doing it again.

He can point at his nose, eyes, ears, hair, belly, mouth, tongue, foot, fingers and we’re working on knees, elbows, armpits, cheeks, etc.  You can tell him to go get his shoes and he’ll go find them and plop down on the carpet so you can put them on him.  And he will also go lay down for diaper changes sometimes too.  He loves to dance and his version of dancing is usually doing some crazy low squats.  Pretty impressive for a little guy.

It seems like just yesterday Abbie was Ben’s age and now she’s a few weeks away from turning 4 years old!  Makes me nervous about how fast the next 15 years are going to go!!

Ben at 17 months (top).  Abbie at 17 months (bottom).