Nineteen Months

 

We have lots of trees and more than our fair share of leaves.  We dedicated a good portion of this weekend to jumping in them and here is our champion leaf-jumper.  He was like the energizer bunny running from pile to pile, throwing them in the air, burying himself in them, etc.  Fall has got to be one of the funnest seasons for 19 month old!

 

And, speaking of being 19 months old, here are some of his talents:

• We have made great strides in the food throwing department.  Took his plate away when he started throwing food and viola!  Problem solved!
• He is talking up a storm!  We are getting multiple new words each day and he is so pleased with himself when he realizes that he is saying the right word to get what he wants.
• He can jump -- literally feet leaving the floor jumping already.  Incredibly cute.
• He loves sports.  If you give him a round object and a stick-like object, he can do just about anything - baseball, golf, tennis.  I predict that he's going to be our athlete.
• He is starting to ask for specific books by name and he remembers which pictures are in which books.  He'll say "baby," go get a book off the shelf and turn to the page with the picture of the baby. 
• He knows our routines and thrives on them.  In the morning, he gets up, gets dressed, eats breakfast and as soon as he gets out of his booster seat, he's running for the stairs saying "teeth, teeth" because he brushes his teeth upstairs after breakfast.  He also know that when I pick him up from the sitter, we head to his brother's school to pick him up.  The whole car ride, he's saying his brother's name and "school."
• He is starting to develop favorite clothing.  He loves his fleece pajamas and often refuses to take them off in the mornings.  He also has a shirt with a gorilla on it that he will dig through his drawer to find or extract from his dirty clothes hamper and beg to wear again.
• He still loves to snuggle, especially in the middle of the night with mommy.  He isn't eating at night very often (although we keep some boxes of shelf-safe milk in our room in case he does get hungry at night), but I think he still likes the familiar and comfortable snuggling of nighttime.  Although I never thought I'd say this during those early months when we were waking up every two hours around the clock, by the time we got to the stage where we are now where he may not wake up at night looking for you anymore, I'm realizing that I'm really going to miss those snuggly middle-of-the-night moments with him.  That was when we really bonded and I'm going to miss waking up with him now that he's big enough to sleep through the night.