A year and a half already! That’s so hard to believe! Your little personality is really coming through and this has been a big month of growth for you! As you can see from the pictures above, you are still my little snuggler. We spend a good half hour to hour every day snuggling on the couch. You love it. And I love it too, I just don’t get a whole lot done. Sometimes you are really good about entertaining yourself and other times you just want to be on me all day long. Luckily these days I don’t have much energy to do anything else since I’m 34 weeks pregnant.
You also like to snuggle with your stuffed animals. You can say “moose” now and you love carrying the big moose around when it used to kind of scare you.
You love Sam and the weinas and you point at them often and can say Sadie. You tend to call all 3 Sadie, but it’s a start.
And you love being around the big kids, especially Abbie. Abbie is an amazing big sister to you and you know it. You go to her for help and you give her lots of hugs and love to sit in her lap. This weekend when we were camping, you were sitting in your little seat on the picnic table and she was keeping you company and I look over and you have your arms wrapped around her with your head on her chest and you were patting her arm with your hand and you stayed like that for a few minutes. It was the sweetest thing I’ve seen in a while. And she loves it just as much as you do. Every day when we go get Abbie from school you say “Hi Abbie” in a super animated voice when she gets in the car. And you used to cry when she would get out of the car. I love watching the bond you two have. It’s a little different with Ben but you do like to play with him too. He’s just not as nurturing as Abbie is and he gets annoyed when you want to do whatever he is doing, and you usually destroy whatever he’s working on. It’s an interesting dynamic between you two. But you love to play with him as well when he lets you.
You are still generally in a great mood. You love to sing songs and will do the signs with the Itsy Bitsy Spider and say “again” every time we’re done signing. We can’t say “chicken” around you without you saying “Bawk bawk” which cracks us up. You know ducks quack now and you are probably adding 2-3 words per week to your vocabulary and repeating a ton more. You figured out how to get on and off your giraffe bike easily and you love playing peek a boo. When I say bye to people at stores or wherever, or thank you, you are right there with signing thank you and waving bye to them and you say bye bye and “tank oo” also. Unless I ask you to say bye or thank you, and then you are shy.
You are getting really good at following simple commands and you seem to be very in tuned with what’s going on around you. The other day your bottle was on the floor and it spilled a little bit. I pointed to the kleenex across the room and asked you to go get a kleenex and wipe up the spill and you did! I can ask you to get certain toys and you’ll do that too or go get your shoes and socks. You LOVE turning things on and off. If lights are on, you can guarantee you’ll turn them off so we are often in the dark. If the front door is open, you will shut it. You have a little bit of OCD, which is hilarious.
Your little temper is starting to shine through. You have melt downs occasionally when you are told no or don’t get your way. You dissolve into a heap on the floor, but they are short lived and you are usually pretty easy to distract and are back to your happy self in no time. You LOVE to be outside, but we can’t let you out there without close supervision and usually when we’re outside, we’re busy. You don’t like being brought in at all. And you don’t like it when the sun is in your eyes when we’re in the car. I don’t blame you. You are a great little traveler overall, but you get pretty upset if the sun is in your face. Easy fix, we just keep a blanket in the car that we shut in the window so it stays out of your face.
Your biggest accomplishment this month is that you learned to climb up on the couch by yourself, which has been “fun”…. Honestly it’s a huge pain in the ass, because I constantly have to watch you. You don’t just climb up and sit down, you like to run back and forth on the couch, which scares me a lot. And you also like to mess with the light that’s next to the couch and turn it on and off a billion times in a row. I caught you once as you fell head first between the couch and the wall. It scared me and you, but you still do it. You’ve fallen off of the couch twice so far, but you’ve also learned how to get off easily by yourself. You tend to bonk your face/mouth more than the other two did combined and you often have a swollen lip from hitting it on something. You already chipped one of your front teeth, but luckily you still have them all. Hoping we can keep all of them in your mouth!
This year for Halloween you were a dragon, and Abbie was Astrid and Ben was Hiccup (from How to Train Your Dragon). You were the cutest little dragon I’ve ever seen. You LOVED trick or treating and although you couldn’t say trick or treat, you would sign or say “please” sometimes and once you got a piece of candy you ALWAYS signed thank you, which everyone loved. You were fascinated by all of the decorations this year. Our neighborhood goes all out for Halloween so there’s a ton to look at. And when we got back you liked handing out candy to kids too. You missed their bags more often than not, but you had fun. And you definitely know what candy is thanks to the big kids. They didn’t get candy at 18 months old but you watch them eat it and I can’t say no to you.
You still go to bed around 8pm at night and get up around 8am. Your naps are from around 12:30pm to 3ish usually so you’re getting lots of sleep. Your eating comes and goes and some meals you’re a bottomless pit and other meals you barely eat anything. As long as you don’t go too long without eating much we don’t get too concerned. You love milk and you ask for it frequently. I try to keep it under 20 oz a day. And you HATE pooping. Sometimes you have really loose poops and sometimes they are pretty firm and you don’t like that at all. You come up to us and tell us “poo poo” and when we ask if you want us to change you you shake your head yes and go running for the couch. It’s adorable.
I took you to your 18 month appointment and you weighed 28.5lbs and your head was 49 cm. However, I think they messed up big time on your height because it said you went from like 90% to the 50th, so something was off. I didn’t even bother to write it down. I’ll have to measure you myself. You are definitely thinning out and losing the baby fat, but you still have some thick hammies and your cheeks are still extra kissable.
Daddy and I just can’t get enough of you and pretty much every night we talk about how adorable you are and what a good little monker you are. I love watching you grow up but if I could keep you this age forever, I would! You’re such a sweet boy!
