17 Months!

What's Jack up to this month?

He has started to show interest in feeding himself with a fork so he's been practicing that.  He does pretty well with it, but of course, as with anything else in the life of a toddler, he only wants to do it when he wants to do it.  That's okay though.

Eating Waffles of Insane Greatness, which really are great.  Fork in one hand, and telling Daddy "all done" {with pictures} with the other.  This kid is serious about his waffles and wasn't amused with getting his picture taken.

Speaking of food, he's still doing pretty well.  He's still on a serious berry kick and will literally eat half a pint of blueberries in a sitting before we have to cut him off because a) how many blueberries are too many for a 17 month old?  I don't want him turning into a blueberry a la Violet Beauregarde, and 2) blueberries ain't cheap and this kid kills them in 2 sittings. 

Jack hasn't added any new words to his repertoire, but I have noticed that his passive language skills are improving by leaps and bounds.  He understand A LOT of what we say now.  He's knows the names of a lot of things, and can do things if you ask him to.  Well... IF he wants to.  He's still a toddler so often he'll act like I'm not talking to him when I'm well aware that not only can he hear me, but he understands exactly what I'm saying.  Ah well.  He can point to his mouth and nose when asked (when he feels like it), and will kick if you ask him to.  He likes to point out different things like Mr. Monkey, which hangs above his changing table.  Asking him to point it out entertains him for about .02 seconds while getting his diaper changed :-/

He looooves to dance.  He will stop whatever he's doing and dance if you ask him to.  He also dances at really random things like a commercial jingle, and OF COURSE if I sing a song he loves it.  Because, what can I say, I'm just a fabulous singer.  He usually claps afterwards as well!  Or... sometimes halfway through the song.  I'm SURE he's not trying to nicely tell me I should stop singing ;)  I usually turn music videos on in the mornings while he's playing so he can intermittently dance along.  He really likes it and has his favorite songs.  And of course, I turn Sesame Street on for him in the afternoons and he just loves that show!  He loves Elmo's World, which I think is probably the favorite part for every toddler, yes?  But he dances along to all the songs and gets up close to the TV to point things out and yesterday he even giggled at something that happened, which was cute.  

Sleep is good.  He's been sleeping about 8.30pm to 9am overnight and still naps from 1 to 4pm in the afternoons. 

Oh, here's something we struggle with all day, everyday.  ::tears hair out::

Dumping his "spill proof" (Ha.ha.ha.) sippy cup is one of Jack's favorite past times.  Why?!  All day we go back and forth with this.  Jack wants his cup so I give it to him.  He drinks it for a minute then he immediately flips it over and starts shaking or tapping the water out and looks right at me waiting for a reaction.  I've tried telling him "no", which of course does nothing, and then taking it.  And I've also tried having no reaction except for to calmly walk over and take it from him.  He used to cry if we had to take it, now it doesn't even seem to phase him.  Any suggestions on how to handle this and get him to STOP spilling the contents of his cup everywhere?  Because it's really frustrating.  I can't keep the cup from him because he needs to drink, but every time I give it to him it ends with the game of him spilling it and getting it taken away.

Grrr...

Moving on...

I'm sure the biggest accomplishment of this month, according to Jack, is finally being able to climb on the furniture.  He's been trying for a while off and on and obviously we haven't encouraged it because I don't particularly enjoy him having this ability, but a few days ago he finally got it and he's been up, down, up, down, up, down, ever since.

Yep.  He's obviously very proud of himself.

And it took him about 2 seconds to realize he can now reach the stuff we hide on the back of the furniture.

This puts us in quite a quandary because the final frontier has now been conquered.  There has been an evolution of where we keep things that Jack can't play with like our drinks, computers, camera, the aforementioned sippy cup that he can't help but spill everywhere, etc.  First, we were still able to keep this stuff laying around anywhere.  And then he became a little mobile and we had to make sure the stuff was sitting in the center of the coffee table so he couldn't reach it.  And then he started pulling up on things and we had to move stuff to the furthest corner of the side table to keep his fingers from reaching it.  And then he could reach that so we started putting stuff up on the back of the furniture.  And now... he can reach that.  So.  Yeah, we're kind of out of places to put things.  I need like a 5 foot high shelf that goes around my entire family room.  It'll be a while until he can reach things that high, right?  Probably not. 

So now he spends a lot of time in Daddy's chair:

Just chillaxin' with my Woo Woo {Firetruck}

What's back here?

Oooh, yes...

Victory is MINE!

I'll just sit here and ponder my plunder.

And now I will JUMP!

What?  I might fall off?  Nonsense, woman.  Does this face look like it believes you? 

Other fun activities:

Stacking blocks.  He can stack 5 block tall towers!  And he can also throw his blocks all around the room :-/

Riding his rocking horse that Grandma A.J. gave him.

He recently discovered the rocking horse.  It was being stored in our office next to the dog's cage.  He saw it one day and started waving at it and making the sound that he makes when he sees an animal.  perhaps he thought it was another dog since it was in the same room where Belle "lives"?  So, I brought it out and he didn't really know what to think at first, but then he decided it was pretty darn cool!  And even though he's still a touch small for it he loves to ride {with assistance}.

And playing on the iPad with Daddy.  Maybe Angry Birds? 

He has also discovered that spinning in circles is entertaining: