17 Months Today

Jackson is a whopping 17 months old today. I can't believe it -- he is growing up before our very eyes & it's WAY too fast! He won't go for a well check until 18 months, but I suspect he is around 23-24 lbs although to my recently rotund figure, he feels like 30 or 40 lbs. My little man is wearing 18 month clothes, just upgraded to size 4 diapers and size 5 shoes. He has gotten so much better (knock on wood!) at eating his vegetables lately. He is still a major fruit lover, but sometimes will eat vegetables over bread -- a HUGE improvement to the once carb only eater.

Jackson takes one nap a day -- it's usually a long 2.5 - 3 hour one and he sleeps about 10 hours a night during the week & 11-12 a night on the weekends. The most recent sleep development is that he will now point to his bed after his nighttime book indicating that he's ready to go to sleep. I no longer rock him for the 5-10 minutes I used to.

He doesn't say a whole lot of true words, but he has a few: Mama, Dada, Yaya, Nana, bye, hi, bubbles, milk ("mem"), book, shoe ("booo"), nose, ball, dog, cat, go, balloon, uh-oh...there may be more, but I'm tired. I just found out tonight as I was taking the pictures below that he can say "cheese." I'm guessing they taught him at school. Despite his limited vocabulary, Jackson IS Dr. Doolittle -- he can tell you what just about any animal says. His menagerie includes: dog, cat, cow, duck, bird, dinosaur, coyote, snake, rooster, lion, monkey, tiger, pig, & occasionally frog. I've tried a couple of times to get him to do it on video, but he's always so busy that it makes it hard to hear. It is so cute to hear him do them and his teachers admit to asking him what the animals say all day long -- even teachers from other classes come by during the day to hear him make the sounds. Poor kid probably gets tired of doing it, but they say he will make the sounds when he's getting in trouble as some sort of "look at me, I'm cute" diversion. He's gonna be trouble...I can already tell! Other tricks: he does the motions & tries to sing "The Wheels on the Bus" and he will march to "We are the Dinosaurs" by The Laurie Berkner Band , he can point to many body parts, pretend sneezes when you say "Bless You," and will smell his feet & say "shoo" if you ask him if he has stinky feet. Oh and he can tell you how old he is by holding up his finger.

He still loves to be outside & will pitch a huge fit when it is time to come back inside. He loves to blow bubbles and go for walks. He likes to climb -- in fact, I just caught him on top of the coffee table today and we battle the stairs daily! One constant is that he makes us laugh all day long and brings inconceivable joy to our hearts!