Eight days ago, Thomas turned 20 months! I'm sorry I didn't get in to document this earlier (and I'll probably end up backdating this eventually), but of course there was Christmas and whole lot of travel packed into the past week or so. Thomas doesn't care much for having his monthly photo taken anymore, but I did manage to get a few that were decent enough!
I unfortunately never got around to a 19 month recap or his photos. We were out of town for Thanksgiving (at my parents' house) and then he got really sick for about a week. Between an ER visit, a doctor's visit, a visit to the pediatric after-hours care and countless telephone conversations with the doctor/nurse practitioner, the time just got away from me. And with a constant fever at or above 103, he was just not in the mood for photos. But the thing is, not much changed between 18 and 19 months for Thomas. I cannot say the same for the period between 19 to 20 months.
He has been growing so much...physically and developmentally. It has been utterly amazing. His vocabulary has exploded. He tries to mimic what we say a lot of the time and he also has many words he remembers all on his own. His most frequently used words are: truck, choo choo (when he hears/sees a train), mommy, daddy, lights (sounds like "ights"), off, up, hug, pat-pat (to pet the dog), juice, milk, ice, eat, please ("peas"), more (which he also signs), mouth, eyes, nose, teeth, neck, wheel (kind of hard to understand this one), bus, Jeep (and he usually can pick them out for some reason), boat, outside (sounds like "tout-ide" or something like that), nap-nap, night-night, rock, and some fun words like whoa and wow. He says more, but those are the most frequently used. He can also say Nannie, Nana and he calls his Papa "Bah-bah." He loves all things with wheels, especially buses, fire trucks, tractors, trucks and the garbage truck. He can also tell you, among others, that the cow says "Mmmm," the sheep says "baaaah," the duck says "quack," the dog says "woof woof," the cat says "meow," the bird says something like "tweet tweet" and the lion/dragon/bear say "roarrrrr."
He loves to go outside, though most of the time he'd rather push his wagon and tricycle than ride in/on them. He's very independent sometimes and prefers to do many things all by himself.
He still is not a great eater. Tonight I got him to eat half a serving of peas by giving them to him frozen. I told him it was ice and he loved them. It was hilarious for me, and I was glad he was finally eating a vegetable!
It truly is the best gift in life watching him grow and develop. Though his ability to repeat what we say means we need to choose our own words carefully, it also is such a thrill to watch him grow and learn. He has such a wonderful personality. Most of the time he is so happy and delightful. When he is tired he can be overly defiant and quite strongwilled and he has already given us a tantrum or two (or more), but he generally is a happy little guy. He naps in the afternoon for 2-3 hours and goes to bed for the night by 8. We continue to keep him on a bit of a schedule, but it really seems to work well for him. It's also nice for us (or at least me!) to have some structure to our day. I don't know what will happen when the new baby arrives!
I'm sure I am forgetting some important things, but hopefully I captured the highlights. Here are the rest of the pictures that were salvaged from this month's wild photo shoot attempt.
He does not like to sit still for things like this and the whole "session" was a fight to keep him on the chair and looking in my direction!
I tried to bribe him with a promise of the paci, but he managed to get the paci and get down. I guess he won.
Then he ran across the hall and tried to play the guitar with his Daddy:
Oh, and by the way, Thomas will probably soon be getting his first haircut. Sigh. :) I'm afraid this will mean he can't be my baby anymore...
