20 Months!

Jack is 20 months old!  I can't believe he'll be two soon!

He's all about testing boundaries right now which although it seems really fun for him, isn't so fun for me!  I spend my days trying to keep him out of trouble, and trouble is his middle name at this point.  He doesn't particularly care for (or acknowledge) the term "no".

He's definitely hit a picky stage with food.  We went through a couple weeks where I just didn't know what to feed the kid!  He was down to only wanting to eat a few things and even those things he changed his mind about day to day.  Talk about frustrating!  Lately he's gotten a little better, but he still changes his mind day to day as to what he likes and what he doesn't like.  Gone are the days where he'd eat anything and everything!  Although, this seems like a pretty normal stage for a toddler so I'm pretty thankful he at least eats some things from every food group.  Although... he doesn't like meat.  At all.  But at least he can get his protein elsewhere.

Jack's favorites right now are yogurt, applesauce, and grapes.  He also seems to really like eggs, toast, cheese, bananas, oranges, sweet potatoes (that I cut into fry-like shapes, season with lots of yummy spices, and bake!), grilled cheese sandwiches, and PB&J sandwiches.  Those are all things I can reliably get him to eat.  There are other things that he'll sometimes eat and sometimes he won't touch.  It just changes day to day, but at least there is a list of things we know he likes!

Eating Eggs and Toast

Dip-dip!  Jack recently discovered the joys of dipping!

On the positive side, in the last week or so Jack has had an explosion of words!  I've known it was coming for a while and although his passive verbal skills were clearly growing by leaps and bounds, Jack just didn't have much to say.  Within the last week he has started saying a lot of new words and he's experimenting by repeating a lot of sounds and trying to mimic a lot of what we say.  I think he's going to be a little chatterbox in no time :)  Just recently he has started to say:

No
Yes
Go! (usually to the dog... no idea where he's heard that...)
Bye-bye
'Nana (banana)
Daddy ("DaDee" instead of DaDa)
Eggs
Bibby (his bib)
Baby ("BayBEE")
Ball
Ear
Baa (sheep)
Moo (cow)
Moon (which sounds a lot like "moo", definitely need to pay attention to context on this one!)
Yesterday he came very close to saying squirrel!

A apologize that the clip is sideways (oops!), but here's a video of Jack saying "baa!".  It's pretty cute!

And of course he's doing lots of babbling.

And even more importantly he has finally started nodding yes!  Before, everything was no.  It's a lot easier to figure out what he wants, or is trying to say when he can indicate yes and no!

He has also started making an "I don't know" gesture where he turns his palms up and kind of shrugs. He doesn't actually say "I don't know", but he makes a sound that sounds like that's what he's saying. It's really adorable! I'm not even really sure where he picked it up.

He loves to look outside every night after dinner for the moon, and he also gets excited when he spots airplanes which happens a lot because we're near an airport.

He's still really into trucks and I would say his little pickup and trailer are his favorite.  He really likes playing with his ball, sitting in his chair, coloring, and reading books too.  He LOVES watching Sesame Street and is of course enamored with Elmo like many of his cohorts.  He loves dancing too.

Coloring!

We hit a rough patch with sleeping a few weeks ago, but thankfully he seems to be a little bit more back on schedule and going down easier.  There were a few days where he really fought his nap and a couple of days where he ended up not napping at all even though he was clearly tired.  Last week, he was up around 7am everyday, which I think was influenced by the time change.  I guess he's just enjoying our days so much he doesn't want to waste time sleeping! 

I've also noticed that Jack seems to be moving into a stage where he's very particular about things.  He knows how things are supposed to be and doesn't like if they're not that way.  For example, we have a floor lamp and a table lamp in our family room.  If we turn only one on he keeps pointing at the other one until we turn it on because that's how it usually is!

And he also knows a lot of his body parts.  When he feels like humoring you he can point to his:

Head
Eyes
Ears
Nose
Mouth
Toes

He also really enjoys pointing things out on his stuffed animals, on us, or even on people on TV :)  He usually chooses to point to eyes, or even more often ears.

He finally gives kisses and hugs!  He started doing this a few weeks ago and it's probably the sweetest thing ever!  I had to wait a long time for it, but I get lots of lovin' now!  Jack also likes to kiss his stuffed animals and have his stuffed animals kiss other things/people, including the dog :-/

He found the remote to our ceiling fan.

And of course enjoyed playing with it.

Playing at a local indoor play area.  He loves anything he can ride on!

Stacking!