19 Months

Parker, my sweet baby--you are now 19 months old.  My little toddler big boy.  Your dad and I constantly talk about how this is the best age, even though we've been saying this your entire life!  You are just so fun to be around and have such a sweet and loving personality.  The pictures were taken while you were eating your yogurt a few days ago.  I took a bunch today that I thought were going to be super-cute of you helping us in the yard and.........the memory card was NOT in the camera!  It was very frustrating, but I was planning on  sharing these pictures anyway.  Here are some fun facts about you right now:

• It was pretty cool outside today, so you wore your jeans.  Your fall shirts are size 18 to 24 months, and your fall shirts are 2T.  You are wearing a size 8 shoe, but they're not wide anymore.  
• You are doing really well with feeding yourself with a spoon or fork.  You still prefer to eat with your hands, of course, but we work on using your silverware often, and you love it!

• Here are some of your most-used words right now: thank you, car, chicken, grilled cheese, moon, ball, milk, bye-bye, hello, hi!, night-night, and everyone's names.  I think your most-used word is "NO!" because that's your answer to almost every question--even if you don't mean it.  Sometimes it's just a short no and others it's a resounding nnnnnnnnnnnnOOOOOOO.  It's actually pretty funny but we try not to laugh.  

• You like to make a lot of animal noises, including a cat's meow, a dog's woof, an elephant's (noise?), a lion's rawwwr, a chicken's "bock-bock", a sheep's baa, a cow's moo, a bunny's hop (obviously not a noise), a duck's quack, and a bird's tweet.  

• This week, you caught a virus from one of the kids at daycare.  You threw up a handful of times starting at about 11:30 and did not go to sleep very easily afterward.  I "slept" (hardly) in the floor of your room with you because we didn't want you to be alone or get sick in your crib.  We were up almost all night.  One of the hardest parts of being a mother is seeing your child sick, and this was the second time that this has happened.  I am glad that it was over very quickly and you were back to yourself the next day.  I know that you will get sick again, but I hope it's not for a very long time.

"Cheese!"

• Something very cute that you do right now is a triple hug.  One of us will be holding you, and you ask the other one to come over, too.  You wrap your arms around both of our necks and squeeze tight.  Then you kind of let go and then squeeze again.  Again, you are so full of love.

• You are learning how to wink.  Daddy will wink, and then you want me to wink, and then you do it in your own special way.  Another hilarious thing to watch!

Yep, this is the winking.  Laugh on!

• You are borderline obsessed with Sesame Street.  Scratch that--you're obsessed.  There are many times throughout the day where you talk about Elmo, Ernie, Bert and Ah-Ah-Ah (the Count).  You are mesmerized when they are on TV, and you start mumbling their names when you're laying in your crib before we come get you in the morning.  We have more than fifty books on your bookshelf, but every night, we hear, "elmo? elmo?  ernie?  elmo? elmo?"  because you are really only interested in one book right now:

It's okay, though.  I fully support Sesame Street and am glad that these are your peeps right now.  It could be worse!  

October will be a busy month for us.  We have a very small trip planned in the middle of the month and have started focusing on a lot of house-related projects.  I am planning on doing more things with you outside since the weather will be cooler and the mosquitoes will hopefully fade out soon.  I think Fall is my new official favorite time of the year, and I can't wait to spend it with you and your Daddy doing fun stuff.  Thank you for making every day so much sweeter for us.  Love you!