18 Months!

Jack is 18 months old!

18-month check up stats: 25lbs 5oz (50th percentile), 33 inches (75th percentile)

I'm finding that he's full of sugar and spice right now.  Although there are some AWESOME things going on at this age, like his expanding vocabulary and the way you can just tell that his little brain is a sponge by how quickly he catches on to things, I am finding that this is quite a difficult age!  He's sure keeping me on my toes.

I honestly think that a lot of the problems that we're experiencing right now are attributable to the language gap we're in.  He understands A LOT, but he doesn't understand everything and he certainly hasn't caught on to cause and effect and although he now realizes that he can sometimes communicate with us, he doesn't yet have the language skills to express everything to us that he wants to.  I think that in another few weeks a lot of our problems will start to become easier as we get better at communicating.  Communication is definitely our main issue right now.  Well... that and the fact that he certainly has an opinion now.  A STRONG opinion ;)

But all of this is normal, I'm sure, and I guess it's part of the joy of parenting a toddler.

Jack is definitely enjoying himself right now.  I recently saw a few diagrams of an experiment that was done with toddlers.  A playroom was set up and then kids were let into the room and observed and their average movements were diagrammed.  The picture of the path of an 18-month-old was all. over. the. place. and with no rhyme or reason.  This is Jack completely!  And then at the age of 2 the path is a little less crazy and at the age of 2 1/2 the path is much more defined and much less areas are visited.  At the age of 3, only like 2 areas were visited in the whole room.

As you may have guessed Jack is definitely inquisitive these days and is into everything.  Luckily for him, he's taller now and can reach even more new cool stuff.  The only problem is he doesn't quite understand why Momma and Daddy like to spoil his fun.  To him, plugging and unplugging an electrical outlet seems like an awesome game and we just don't want him to have fun.  See where the misunderstandings come into play? :D

A huge milestone we've reached this month is eating with utensils!  He's doing really well and I'm liking it too because although it does take a little longer for him to eat, he's getting better at it everyday and he seems more likely to try things and enjoy them if he's feeding himself with a fork/spoon because he thinks it's really fun.  He's definitely showing signs of entering the stage where he wants to do everything on his own.

Here he is enjoying some yogurt:

And this is a very rare example of him wearing a bib.  I think it stayed on for about 3 minutes total.  He will. not. wear a bib.  He's not too messy of an eater, thankfully, but with this whole learning to use utensils phase mealtimes have become considerably messier.  He still won't wear a bib :-/

Jack has added a few new words to his repertoire of MaMa, DaDa, and BehBeh (Belle, our dog) - Car (which he says like Kah... really a strange word for his first deviation from immediate family members, I think), and very recently Nana (my mom), Papa (my dad), TaTa (my brother), and KyKy (his cousin).  We're trying to teach him his name but so far if you ask him if he can say it he shakes his head no.  Silly boy!

He recently started saying their names when, brace yourselves, he had his first overnight visit with them!  Yes, this was a HUGE step for me us.  Mark and I attended a wedding last weekend and we dropped him off for the afternoon and evening with the instructions (to my mother who has been wanting him to stay the night since he was oh... 3 days old) to go ahead and try to put him to bed if he was tired before we were able to leave the wedding.  That happened so he ended up staying the night.  It was also the first time he had napped at their house.  And of course, the little stinker that he is, he was on his BEST behavior, no crying, no tantrums, slept like an angel, yada yada.  Essentially, he totally played the game and is obviously looking for an invitation to stay again.

Speaking of sleep we've hit yet another sleep regression, which by the way, why does no one tell you about sleep regressions?  I totally thought that once he started sleeping through the night as an infant (which he did REALLY early on) we'd be gold.  Ha.ha.ha.  Sometimes babies have sleep regressions and it sucks.  Jack has been right on schedule for all the others, but I had no idea they also happen this late in the game.  Let me tell you, they do.  This sleep regression hit the week leading up to him staying with my parents, which had me really nervous, but again, he was on his best behavior there.

For several days to a week he was having trouble going to bed at night.  We've had no issues with this for a VERY long time.  He actually seems to really like his bed and any time we've had sleep troubles in the past they've always manifested in wake ups overnight.  The trouble we had with putting him to bed was not fun at all for anyone concerned.  Thankfully after a few nights it seems to have passed.  However, he's waking up early again like he was doing a handful of months ago and that's no fun for anyone either.  This has been going on for about 2 or 3 weeks now so I guess we'll just have to ride out the next few weeks and then hopefully he'll get back on track.  That's what happened every other time at least.

We've been having lots of fun.  He loves to watch Sesame Street and especially Elmo.  I don't know why Elmo is such a draw for toddlers, but he really is.  Jack loves Elmo.  It's scary how quickly kids become attached to a certain show/character.  He still loves to read and his favorites this month have been Trucks which just has pictures of all sorts of big trucks.  Not as enjoyable to read for me as it appears to be for him!  And he also really likes Harry the Dirty Dog right now.  He's also starting to take an interest in doing some puzzles, which is something new and fun.  Usually he just wants us to put the pieces in for him, but lately he's been doing it himself and doing a really good job!

His favorite toy right now by far is this little truck and trailer that his grandpa and uncle brought him back from a trip.  He carries these things around all day, every day.  They're never far.  And although he knows how to hook up the trailer by himself he really likes for me to do it a hundred times a day.

Here's Jack playing hide-and-seek with the front door.

He loves to play hide-and-seek, or maybe it's closer to peek-a-boo really, but either way.  He hides his head with a blanket and if you say, "Where's Jack?  I don't see him!" he will stand super still and start giggling like you can't actually see him.  Then he pulls the blanket off his head and laughs.

He thought having a monkey hanging from his neck was really funny!

And some pics from a recent trip to COSI.  Dada took the day off work and was able to come with us for the first time!

He loves to play with the wheelbarrow.

Uh oh, may have splashed himself in the face...

LOVES the water area, of course.

And this is what Jack likes to do while I'm making the bed, although he doesn't usually hold so still.  I think he was being a little shy since I had the camera.