20 months

My little baby is 20 months old.  I look at my life sometimes and I am so surprised and how he has changed and how I have changed.  I am not a woman with a baby any more but a real mom who parents and has to make choices, manage tantrums, teach, and cultivate a personality.  I have learned so much about life from him and I hope he has from me as well. As his communication improves, he is showing more and more of who he is.  He loves the role of “tiny dictator” and enjoys his newfound power to not only communicate his wants (and of course needs), but even more importantly, to use a series of physical, verbal, and emotional tools to make sure it happens.  He certainly got his volume from his mommy and can yell your ear off.  He also has learned to grab our hands and pull us around (often while yelling commands at us).  He will pull so hard he will almost rip your finger out (and he doesn’t care if you are pregnant and it takes you a while to get off the ground).  It is so fun that he wants us to play though and nothing is better than him asking for our hand and then holding it with his tiny little hand and leading the way.  He also knows his two emotional tools.  He will pitch a spectacular fit, complete with baby tears.  Our new problem is that sometimes he gets so into the show we don’t actually know what the issue is.  Secondly, he knows how to push our buttons and will go around the house doing everything that we don’t like him to do.  It is interesting to see him start to understand the world and see what his options are.  He certainly is a helper and will go along with almost everything but he has his own thoughts too.  It has been neat that generally we haven’t had to “force” anything in a while.  He will voluntarily go to his room for diaper changes and bedtime, he’ll allow me to brush his teeth, and he’ll go to his own high chair and ask to be put in.  Sometimes it takes more persuasion but it is nice to give him power over his own body and have him be willing to get done what needs to get done. 

Language

I just can’t believe how his language has developed.  I was realizing we need to continue to build his vocab but we are running out of nouns in the house and parks, so we’ll have to continue to diversify his experiences (though we do pretty well already)!  He knows almost everything in the house (can’t list, there are too many), yard (tree, bush, pinecone, bug), transportation (bus, truck, car, motorcycle, airplane, gas (for gas station)), kitchen (all food), bathroom (sink, shower, bath, potty, pee, poop, fart, wash, towel, soap, garbabe), bedroom (crib, chair, diaper, cream, sound machine, mobile, books), parks (slide, swing, stairs, kids, sand, shovel, bucket), etc.  He has names for all his books and toys, from his slinky to his basketball hoop.  It is incredible.  He even pulls some out that we can’t explain: he calls his pot on his new kitchen stove his “tea pot.”  None of us ever say tea pot, so interesting.  He is starting to expand into more two word phrases, “mommy help” “julia’s car” but they are still less common.  He generally prefers to string together a list of commands, “papa, shoes, up, outside.” 

He is learning his abcs and I would say he knows most of it, he will say “abc” and then sometimes will say things that are similar to the letters up to an enthusiastic “g.”  He will often volunteer “h” at the right time if we are signing it (his favorite letter), but generally doesn’t say ijklmnop.  He’s obsessed with “QRS” for some reason and will sing that randomly, as well as in the song if you pause.  He has a few times, done a complete “qrstuvwxy.”  It was amazing!  He also adds “now I” to the end since he knows the words come next.  He actually started doing this when we pulled out a laptop his great aunt josie gave him (we periodically rotate toys to keep them fresh).  It sings the alphabet and he fell in love.  He loves to sit in our tunnel with daddy and look at the letters.  He recognizes O, Q, and H consistently.  Sometimes a few others he gets a lucky guess.

He’s also working on counting and likes “1, 2, and 3.”  Unlike the alphabet which he knows are letters I don’t think he grasps counting yet.

Colors are not his thing. Despite being able to name everything, he hasn’t gotten too into colors.  He will say most of the words, “green, pink, red, blue, purple” but he doesn’t know what they are.  He knows they are colors, but he is often wrong.  Will be interesting to see when he puts it together.  
One of his quirkiest language things is a particular litany he has.  He knows the word “hit” and that he shouldn’t do it, but he is very interested in the topic.  He will take something and hit something inanimate (xylophone mallet on couch) and say “hit” and then will pause and say “People” pause “kids” pause “slide.”  Everytime!  It is so funny.  I’m not sure I fully understand why he does it yet, but it is interesting so see how his mind is putting things together. 

Physical

He can climb all over the playground and is generally the youngest kid out there.  He seems not to have much fear and has a great sense of how to climb.  We spot him, but he can climb ladders that are 7 feet tall and also can do rock walls and other climbing apparatuses.  He is getting a pretty good run and likes the idea of jumping, though he hasn’t figured out how to get both feet off the ground yet.  He walks up and down stairs now, but prefers if we hold his hands going in and out of the garage on the big stairs (though for fun he will step off boxes that are twice as high inside, maybe he realizes concrete is less forgiving).  He can climb in and out of the car on his own and will sit himself in the carseat.  However, we just bought our new van and it is much higher, so he hasn’t figured that one out yet.  He likes to sit on his own in the chairs at the yogurt shop and holds his own cup and spoons the yogurt in his mouth, all on his own.  We don’t even bring a bib because he doesn’t spill. 
He likes to do all sorts of non-baby activities and today was stacking boxes from our subscribe and save program at amazon, they were all big and heavy, but he could stack them.  He would much rather stack household things that blocks any day. 

He is getting interested in his potty and will sit on his while we use the bathroom.  We don’t take his pants off since he doesn’t seem interested in actually performing and it is a long of work, but he will say “pee, fart, poop” when he sits.  So he is getting the idea.  Still couldn’t care less about having a wet or poopy diaper though!

Favorites

Logan has always been pretty opinionated (wonder where he got that from), but it is fun to see it manifest.  He loves music and is obsessed with it.  He loves to ride in the car because we listen to music and when he sees cars he will often say “car song” since people in cars get to listen to songs.  He doesn’t watch much tv, but his two favorite things are 30-60 second clips of songs.  He loves the American authors “best day of my life” song and will jump up and down when we play the 60 second pbs clip of animals to it.  He sings parts of the song and he knows what animals are in the pbs special and will tell you when in the song they are if you are in the car.  It is too funny.
 
He also has fallen into some funny logan routines.  One is that after meals we wipe his hands and face and he also wants his toes wipes.  It is cute, so we oblige, as long is it is after hands and face. 


He just really is the apple of my eye and a true delight to spend time with.  Hard to believe that I will ever be able to love another human as much as I love this kid, though I know I will.  It flabbergasts me that at one point I considered not having kids because I feel like having Logan has been the best thing to ever happen to me and although I was happy before, I feel like THIS is what life is all about.  I’m so happy to be Logan’s mom and can’t wait to see what the next few months bring.