Charlie’s Eighteenth Month

17 Months to 18 Months

Only one more month until nursery! It is seriously ridiculous taking him to Sunday School and Relief Society. He is just blabbing and walking everywhere. All he wants to do is walk the halls. We have our little baby corner where the kids try to share/steal toys during the lessons. It gets kind of embarrassing with how loud they are. The 18 Month mark couldn’t come fast enough! One day, a couple of weeks before Charlie turned 18 months, my friend (who happens to be the Jr. Nursery Leader) invited Charlie to join nursery that day. Jason and I looked at each other and were like, “Are you serious?” How awesome is that? We were thrilled, and Charlie dove right in to play with the toys. He did great! The rest of the block, Jason and I were in heaven! It was like we were on a date or something. Nursery is the best babysitter ever!

Right now, Charlie loves beans, rice, and yogurt. His meals during the day usually consist of some sort of combination of those things. He just loves them. If you try to give him anything besides some of his favorite foods, it gets really difficult. He can be so crazy hard to feed! That is probably one of the most frustrating things right now. Foods that I know he will like if he will just taste them and give them a chance, he will just spit out immediately or throw them on the floor. Arg! I have to resort to hiding pureed versions of vegetables or fruits in with the the beans, rice, and yogurt.

He loves putting clothes and towels above his head and then rest them on his shoulders around the back of his neck. I am not sure if he thinks he is getting dressed or wearing a scarf or what, but he really is obsessed with that lately.

He can climb up on the kitchen chairs now, and that means he can climb up onto the kitchen table too if he wants. Yikes! He can walk really fast now, it is almost at a run. He walks kind of pigeon toed, with his right foot angling inwards. He is doing really well on the stairs now. We don’t really have to worry about him anymore. He is able to make it up and down the stairs safely, by himself. We don’t have to worry about keeping the gate up or watching him every single time.

With the cold weather really setting in, I have been really stressed with how I was going to keep this boy entertained. He loves being outside, and he is constantly standing at the front door, wanting to be let out. I knew I had to find something to replace the outdoors for the cold months ahead, so we wouldn’t go crazy! Besides making visits to family and friends, a fun way that we kept each other entertained was by having dance parties. Sometimes we danced to our Pandora Disney Station, other times it was some of my popular hip hop music, and during the first part of December it was Christmas music. Charlie loved it all, and it was a great distraction from the fact that we were trapped inside. Charlie has one dance move....running in circles. If you consider falling a dance move, then he has two dance moves: running in circles and falling.

With all of the Christmas decorations up for the holiday season, I was shocked at how good Charlie was with the ornaments on the tree. I imagined a lot more destruction and having to replace the ornaments regularly, but he was pretty good. He had his moments, just as any toddler would, but overall he did really well. His favorite ornament to pull down, however, was an old Mickey Mouse ornament that Uncle Karl gave to Jason as a boy.

Notice the newspaper scraps...that is Charlie's contribution to the tree decorating

Charlie still loves watching TV. I don’t think he will ever get over that. But he is starting to show an increased interest in books. Hurray! He still doesn’t say any words, but hopefully one of these days he will surprise us.

Speaking of surprises, one night after his bottle and after his bath, Charlie unexpectedly threw up over my shoulder onto the base of the Christmas tree. It was more throw up than we have ever actually seen him vomit. (We wonder if he got sick from the play-date he had the day before because another girl from the play-date got sick that night as well). This was just a few days before Daddy got really sick after eating at Tucanos. So Daddy may have gotten sick from too much food, or from catching a bit of what Charlie had. The days following Charlie’s throw up surprise, he acted totally fine. I kept things low key and babied him, but he acted as if all was well. Such a trooper.

Two kiddos at the play-date before getting sick

...and the aftermath

Around this time, I moved Charlie’s nap closer to one. That really seemed to work well. We were also flexible, however, if we were busy or if things came up. Charlie seems to be pretty good at adapting to different nap times if need be. If I can help it, I try to keep things on schedule for him (and for me), but it is not the end of the world if we have to make a sudden change.

Relaxing with/on Daddy

Speech, speech, speech!