Hank is 18 months!

 

Hank turned 18 months old two weeks ago!

Hank's stats...

Brett took Hank to his 18 month checkup a couple of weeks ago because I had an ultrasound at the same time.  

Weight: 24 lbs (25% - yay, finally packing on the LBs)

Height: 33 in. (72% - this means he only grew .5” in three months…but the nurse told Brett she thinks he may be taller because he was quite difficult to measure.  Ha ha imagine that, Hank wouldn’t be still!)

Head: 19” (66% - first time we have received a percentile on this stat)

Notable things about Hank at this age...

Hats – He loves to wear a hat.  He pats his head when he wants to put a hat on.  (This is also the way to say “hat” in sign language, although I didn’t teach him that!)  I am so happy about this because I’m kind of a freak about getting sunburned so it pleases me to no end that he is so great about keeping a hat on his head.  And it’s just plain adorable when he has his ball cap on!

Handles - If a bucket or bag has a handle on it, he puts his arm through the handle and slides it up to his shoulder and carries it around.  When we go to the park, he takes his sand bucket, slings it up on his shoulder and walks to the sand box.  When we are leaving the house, he’ll grab my purse and carry it the same way to the front door.  He’ll even grab his sippy cup and toss it in my purse – clearly copying me!

Buckles – He’s really interested in buckling himself in to his car seat, stroller, and booster seat.  He likes to climb into all of these things by himself and once he’s situated he grabs the straps and starts helping me buckle him in.  During the day, he climbs up in his booster seat whenever he’s hungry and plays with the buckle until I get him some food.

Cooking – He likes to pretend to cook.  He drags out the pots and spoons on a regular basis and stirs things in the pots.  I ask “are you cooking” and he says “yah”.

Cranky pants – He can be pretty cranky when he wakes up.  Over the past month we’ve started a new routine where Brett gets him out of his crib in the morning and brings him into our bed so he can drink his sippy cup of milk in there.  Hank needs his morning milk like some people need their morning coffee.  If he could say it I think he’d say “I don’t do anything before I’ve had my first cup of milk!”  While he drinks his milk he cuddles and snuggles up with us and we love it!  He isn’t much of a cuddler so we’re taking it when we can get it.

Swimming – Hank is getting so comfortable in the swimming pool.  We have been going to swim classes at our YMCA twice a week for a little over a month and he really loves it.  The classes aren’t true swim lessons, they are more like a playgroup in the water for babies and toddlers.  The instructors spend time with each of the kids to help them work on skills and Hank is finally getting the hang of kicking his feet (sometimes!) and floating on his back (with my help).   This week he has been trying to “swim” in the bath tub and even leans back so that I can help him float on his back.  This is so amazing considering he used to cry when he’d get his hair wet in the bath and now he wants to do it!

Teeth – He has four teeth on top and two in the middle on the bottom (he looks like a little rabbit!).  In addition, he has all four of his first year molars.  His molars started coming in around 16 months and they took about a month and a half to all come in.
 

Breakfast – Hank is a bottomless pit in the morning.  On a typical day, he eats anywhere from 2 – 4 “breakfasts” all before 8:30 am.  He has his huge sippy of milk when he wakes up and normally he also has an entire banana and oatmeal.  When he sees Brett and I getting out our food, he always wants what we’re having too.  This means he will sometimes have a bowl of cereal, piece of toast, a smoothie, a muffin, or whatever else we’re eating.  It’s hard to keep him satisfied!  Sometimes after all of this he’ll get one of his snack cups and come to me asking for some O’s.  I’m glad he likes breakfast this much…it is my favorite meal of the day anyway!

Child locks – Are no match for him.  We’ve purchased no less than four different types.

Blowing his nose – When he teeths he gets a mean runny nose, therefore over the past few months he learned how to blow his nose.  It is a favorite for him.  When he comes in the bathroom, he’ll unroll some toilet paper, blow his nose (even if it’s not necessary), show me the tissue, say “trash”, then throw it in the trash.  If he is in the bathroom while one of us is getting ready, we usually have to block him from the toilet paper or else it all gets used up and put into the trash.

The park – When we go on walks in our neighborhood, he knows which streets have the parks and the library on them.  When in the stroller, if we do not turn down those streets, he leans forward, tries to look down the street and points and grunts.  If we go on a walk without the stroller, he always leads us to the closest park.  So clever!

Sleep – He finally dropped his morning nap around 16 months.  This was a little hard for me to take at first because I had to figure out what to do with him all morning long.  Let’s be honest.  It’s kinda hard to go from hanging out with your kid for just a few hours at a time to 6 or 7 hours straight.  To top it off, when he first started on one nap he was only napping for an hour at most, and usually less than that.  This was pretty rough for me since he had always been a fabulous napper, previously napping for 3-4 hours a day.  I wasn’t a very good mom or very nice for a couple of weeks there.  I was struggling.  After a few weeks of short naps, we fell into a really nice routine again:  eat lunch, then nap.  His naps now last at least two hours usually.  As for bed time, he goes to bed between 7 pm and 7:30 pm and sleeps until about 6 am.  He wakes up before 6 am sometimes but we leave him in the crib because it’s just not fair for the rest of us to have to get up that early!

Waving – He waves bye bye to everything that goes bye bye.  (He doesn’t say bye bye, he only waves bye bye.)   He waves bye bye all day long without me prompting him and he does it in all types of situations: when I put food in the refrigerator, when we put away his toys, when someone passes us on the street, right before I close the car door after putting him in his car seat, etc.  I can’t help but smile when I see him do this because I love that his little brain is realizing that these things are going away for a little while.

I love this picture Sandy took of Hank.

What Hank is saying...

Trash – He really likes trash.  He picks up anything that looks like trash, wrinkles up his nose or tilts his head, asks “trash?”, I answer “yes”, then he walks to the trash can and throws it away.  (The trash can is behind a cabinet that has a child lock which he knows how to out-maneuver, mind you.)

Wow, wow, wow! – This one is so hilarious to me.  He says it in so many circumstances…when he’s falling down, when he’s running fast, when he’s being goofy, when he’s running around on the bed and losing his balance, etc.  I find myself repeating it when he says it and then he starts saying it again.  We both start laughing when this happens.

I go! – He says this whenever we are getting ready to go and he sees me put on my shoes.  It’s like he wants to make sure I am going to take him with me.  (I suppose this is officially his first sentence too!)

Yah/Yeah/Sure – He is very good at answering questions that require a yes or no answer.  He says all three of these.  When he says “sure” it just kills me because he says it in a high pitch and it sounds so grown up.

No – He doesn’t pronounce this as “no”.  Anytime he wants to answer with “no” he shakes his head back and forth repeatedly, usually squints his eyes, and then says something that sounds like “neow, neow, neow” over and over again.  It is just so funny to me.  I have no idea how he learned to say it that way and to add in the head shake!

This – Sounds like “dis” in a long, drawn out southern accent.  He says it when he doesn’t know the word for something.

Ma/Mama – Means milk.  Go figure.  For a little while I really thought he was referring to me but then I realized he always said it when he was handing me a cup or yanking on the refrigerator door.  Still looking forward to the day where I get a little glory around here!

Da/Dadda – This one happens all the time!  (Insert jealousy here).  When Brett comes home Hank goes running through the house saying “Yay Da Yay Dadda!” repeatedly at the top of his lungs.  It is one of the cutest things to see him get so excited to see his dad.

Toast – He thinks all bread is toast.  He will open the cabinet that has our toaster in it and try to get it out as he keeps repeating “toast, toast”.

Counting – I think that I say “one, two, three” at least a hundred times a day.  Because of this, Hank has started copying me.  Anytime he is about to jump off of something or drop something or do something that takes a count down, he says something that sounds like his own version of “one, two, three”.  When Brett or I start counting and we say “one”, he will clearly say “two” really loud and then he says something that sort of resembles “three”.  It is so funny! 

Other new words...
Truck, trash truck, dog, cheese, stroller (his own non-English version), sweep, outside, sit, chair

Sign language...
He says “all done”, “more”, “hat”, and my favorite…”toilet/poo poo”.  The last one he uses all the time.  He will sometimes tell me when he has made a dirty diaper.   A few months ago, he used to tell us almost every time he made a dirty diaper, but then he realized that when he told us, we’d change his diaper.  (And yes, the boy still HATES diaper changes but we’re probably running at a 50% fuss rate on diapers these days.)   If one of us walks in the bathroom he makes the sign.  If we talk about the bathroom, he makes the sign.  When Ellie goes outside to potty or we take her on a walk and he sees her potty, he makes the sign.

Unintelligible talk…

I love that he will look up at us and talk about something that makes no sense to us.  He stands there and just babbles on and on.  We have noticed lately that there are a few sentences he says to us on a regular basis and we wish we knew what he was saying.  I have been trying to catch his babbling on a video because it’s so sweet but when I get the camera out of course he runs off or stops talking.

18 months just seems so old to me.  I think I have to officially realize that he’s a little boy but it’s so hard to do that.  He still melts my heart just like he did the first day I met him and for that reason alone I am going to have a hard time NOT calling him my baby for the rest of his life.

-a