the bishops: Caleb - 18 Months (ALSO VERY LATE!)

16 Months
The signs you know at this point are: "Please," "More" (you're now back to doing this sign the way you always have--with one set of fingertips tapping against the palm of your other hand) and "All done". I tried to teach you "Thank you," but the sign for it looks so similar to blowing kisses that you just kept blowing kisses instead.

Listing your favorite foods right now is hard because you eat pretty much anything, but you particularly love your morning banana, cheese, rice cakes, grapes and apples. You also eat lots of vegetables, but you haven't specifically asked for any of them yet. You've also recently tried and loved cottage cheese, yogurt and applesauce. I will say that for months now that you have been a bit of a mooch when it comes to food. It doesn't matter how much food you've just eaten, if we let you down from your highchair when we're eating, you'll always run over and want to eat whatever we're having too.

One thing that you've been doing for a little while is when we ask you where something is (Example: "Caleb, where's the ball?"), you'll look around to find it, but you'll hold your hands up around your shoulders with your palms facing up. I think this is the only picture I have of you doing that, but I love it.

A few of your favorite toys right now include rocks, sticks and your animal book.

You love your baths and whenever I ask you if you want to take one, you take off running toward the bathroom. A couple of times you hesitated, turned around and ran to your toys to pick out either your duckie or your ball. You'll also go to your room and get your towel when I ask you to.

I love the pitter patter sound of your footsteps as you walk and run through the house.

One day while changing your dirty diaper, you were squirming so I made up a song about stinky pooh. You thought it was really funny and started flinging your hands around to the beat of my song. After I finished changing your diaper, you wanted me to keep singing that song, so you would prompt me by flinging your hands up and down. Now, you use that same gesture to tell me when you've gone pooh in your diaper. Hopefully this is a big step toward making potty training easier.

You're generous with your kisses when we ask and will even offer them without being asked.

I'm amazed at how much you understand. I asked you recently to throw something in the trash, which is something I often do myself but rarely use the words to explain what I'm doing, however you did it right away. You've even started picking up bits of leaves or trash that you might find on the floor and putting them in the trash on your own. You're also really good about going to get your coat, hat, socks, book, truck, ball, etc. when asked.

At this point you can take off your hat, shoes and socks by yourself.

You got a lot better at opening presents this month. You weren't too interested in it when you turned 1, but you thought it was much more fun at Christmas.

17-18 Months
The words that you say now are: "apa" (apple), "ba" = ball/bite, "kick," "dada," "mama," "jeez" (cheese), "duckie," "sockie," "k" (rice cake), "boom boom," "good," "hattt" (hat) and "eg" (egg).

You enjoy making animal sounds and at like to imitate a puppy, cow, elephant, snake and whale.

Lately we've been going on walks at night after Daddy gets through with work. It's pretty cold outside, so we bundle you up and give you a tour of Graham in your stroller. Anyway, you are absolutely adorable in your matching hat and mittens, your thick coat and a blanket over your legs.

Speaking of cold weather, we had a pretty major snow storm here, and though you've been in the snow before, I think this was the deepest snow you've experienced. Our "big" snow storm in Graham resulted in more than half a foot of snow in our backyard. When we first went out in the snow, you were confused at how to get the snow off your mittens. I showed you how to hit your hands together to get it off, and after that you seemed to enjoy the snow more.

You still LOVE your tummy and love to lift your shirt with a huge grin and pat it while saying, "boom boom". You also love to see my tummy and will often come to look at my tummy when I ask you where the baby is.

One of our favorite things that you do has to do with a head lamp that your daddy has. You love to play with it and will hand it to us while squinting your eyes and scrunching your nose (in anticipation of the light being turned on).

You love to play on the bed. You like to lean back against stacked pillows like you've seen us doing. You also play games like you're going to get off the bed and will hang your feet off and then grunt for us to help you. The problem is that you don't seem to know whether you want down or up because if we let you down, then you'll hold your arms up to get back up. However, if we pull you back up, you'll just get back into that hanging position. Silly little monkey!

You've learned to take off your pants by yourself, which usually happens as you play in your crib before you fall asleep for your nap. I'm just hoping that you don't learn how to do the same with your diaper!

One day when I was laying you down to go to sleep, I started to walk toward the door and I heard you make this "mmm" sound, which is what you do when you're giving kisses. I turned around to see that you had your face pressed up against the side of the crib, trying to give me a kiss between the slats of the crib. Well, there was no way I could turn down an offer like that, so I came over to you, bent down and we kissed between the crib slats. You giggled in delight and scooted over several slats and then did it again, so I followed you and got my kisses. This has definitely become a game with you every time you lay down for a nap or bed time. Now, though, to tease us a little bit, you'll often wait until we start to walk off before you pucker up between the slats. It's so cute and is a game you would likely play endlessly if we kept going with it.

One new thing you started doing with this month was sort of a game. Usually while holding a ball you'll quickly lay down on the ground on your tummy, propped up on your elbows a kicking your legs a little in the air. You'll look up at me with a huge grin and stay there until I lay down on my tummy with you. You think this is pretty funny.

You had your first home haircut, and you handled it like a champ, (though you don't appear too enthused in this picture). You sat pretty still and didn't fuss, even though it took me forever because I had no clue what I was doing. Your daddy cut the back of your hair with clippers, and I attempted the top with scissors.

Unfortunately, you went through a hitting phase that mainly just happened when we tried to lay you down for bed and you didn't want to go. Sometimes after you had gotten in trouble for it, you'd switch to playing gently with my hair or even giving us a kiss. It broke my heart, and I'm thankful this wasn't a long term behavior.

Any time you find something on the floor (a crumb, a piece of trash, a broken off piece of Wally's dog food), you'll walk over and throw it in the trash. Mama's little helper!

You recently went on your first hike. This is something your daddy and I really enjoy, so I hope you do one day too. You weren't terribly interested in the hike portion of our time at Enchanted Rock--you were much more concerned with stooping down every couple of steps to play with all the rocks and sticks.

Caleb, you also recently discovered bowling, and you LOVE it! You were so excited about all of the bowling balls.

At this point, you're still taking 2 naps a day--one from 10 or 10:30 to around 12 or 12:30 and one from 3:30 to around 5. You don't sleep that whole time but will often play until you wear yourself out. You don't have any toys or blankets in your crib but can keep yourself entertained for quite a while. You're wearing mostly 18 Month pajamas, 18 Month shirts and 12 Month pants. We do 18 Month pants sometimes but have to roll the waistband. Your shoes are a Size 4 and you wear a Size 4 Overnite diaper at night and either a Size 3 or 4 diaper during the day. I guess you went through a growth spurt over the last few months because people are always commenting on how tall and thin you've gotten.

By the time you turned 18 months, you had 2 more teeth (incisor and molar) on your bottom right and your incisor on your top left, bringing your teeth total to 10.

At your 18 Month checkup, you weighed 24lbs (24.1%) and were 33.75" long (86.49%). I just can't get over how tall you're getting and how much older it makes you look!