The Little Man

When did my little baby become a little man? He's been such a funny, cheeky, expressive little fellow this past week. Even the mommies of my nanny charges have commented on how much older he seems lately. He's such a *kid* all of a sudden!

Today he ran up to me an said "Juice!" I was reading a book to Luke, so told Reshen I would get him some in a minute, after I was finished with the page I was reading. Being only 16 months, he didn't want to wait a minute and said "Juice!" again, touching my arm and leaning into my face. I again told him just a minute. He then proceeded to tug at my arm and tried to physically pull me into the kitchen! He *really* knew what he wanted and that was for me to pour him some juice. We need to work on that patience. At least he gave me a very sweet "thank you" when I finally gave it to him.

He is very into slides and sees them everywhere. The other day he noticed the couch cushion at an angle and told us it was a slide. He then spent close to 20 minutes "sliding" down it (it was a short ride, but he didn't care). He does excellent at the park now and can go down the toddler slides all by himself. All I have to say is "Let's go to the slide," and he practically climbs into the stroller himself. He saw a *huge* slide at Costco yesterday and was extremely excited about it- too bad it was only a display model and out of reach.



He still loves vacuuming and will grab his own little vacuum every time I use mine. Today he had such a fun time of it, he kept announcing "more!" every time I turned mine off. I ended up vacuuming one more room than I had planned just because he was enjoying it so much.

One of the funniest developments has been his singing. Yes, our boy now sings :-) I play his British Action Songs CD in the car and he will pick out a word and "sing" it at the right moment. For Wheels on the Bus it is the word "All" in the chorus. It's *so* cute and hilarious. He's loud and very off-key, but his timing is perfect! Even though I am so sick of that CD, I play it anyways just to hear him sing.

He has really begun to show beginnings of make-believe. He plays with his doll, feeding it a bottle while making little eating motions with his own mouth. He also likes to take the doll's diaper on and off, and sometimes we wrap it in a blanket and pretend it is asleep. He also likes to load up his little school bus with "guys" (as he calls them) and push it around saying "bye-bye."

He has shown more interest in potty-related ideas. The other day we were at a store and he suddenly grabbed his diaper and said "diaper!" "pee pee!" He did it again when we got home, so I changed him and he was wet. He also will poo and tell me "diaper!" Now this doesn't happen all the time, just every once in awhile, but it's a start. There have also been some times he wants his diaper changed and it's not even wet, so I don't know what's up with that. I think we are going to buy a potty chair this weekend so he can get a little familiar with it. I don't expect him to actually use it yet (I don't even know if he can physically control it yet), but I figure there is no harm in introducing it.

He is saying *so* many words these days. I've actually stopped keeping track because he really tries to say almost everything. I love how he'll pick a word out of a sentence I say and repeat it. He's also saying more two word phrases. This is just a *small* sample of what new things he has been saying lately:

carrot (ker-tit)
whale
mine
blanket (un-ket)
basket (as-ket)
egg
guys
tractor (truh-ter)

His phrases lately have to do with people or objects leaving: "cat go?" "dada bye-bye" "kaka (one of our friends) car" and of course there is still the "no mine!"

I'm always excited to see what the little man is going to do next :-)