I'm coming out of summer hiatus to let you all know that Charlie did, in fact, turn 18 months old on Tuesday! Hooray! We celebrated today by taking him to see Dr. L for his 18 month well visit. I am happy to report that Charlie is in perfect health and is right on track developmentally. Well, I guess I will brag a bit about how is actually a little bit ahead developmentally. What is the point of having a baby blog if you can't brag about what a baby genius you are raising?
The big thing this month is words. It really does seem like overnight Charlie just started coming out with tons of new words. We are at the point where I can teach him to say something and he catches it right away. For example, today we were looking at a book with a picture of a goat. I pointed and said "Charlie can you say goat?" "Goh," he replied. Twenty minutes later we looked at the book again and I said "What is that?" And again, "Goh." He is picking up words that quickly.
This is not to say he is speaking in sentences and holding conversations or anything. We counted up that he has roughly 40 words in regular rotation, but he doesn't do much linking them together yet. Some of his new favorites are: sit, done, fly, car, snack, park, outside, grapes, and slide. His articulation is still not great, but he gets his point across. We can literally be driving someplace we've never taken him and if we drive by a park he starts yelling "Slide! Slide! Slide!" The child can spot a slide from a mile away.
Which brings me to Charlie's favorite things these days. He absolutely loves going to the park with his Daddy, and is getting so good at climbing on all the equipment. He is practicing hard at mastering stairs by himself, and can do it if there is a low enough hand rail. He motors around at top speed, is great at hitting the ball off of his tee and the backyard, and really loves playing with older kids, like our backyard neighbor Tyler. Tyler and his dad have outside playtime in the evening right when we do, so Charlie loves jibberjabbering at 3.5 year old Tyler and watching him do big boy stuff.
I am knocking on every wood surface in our house as I write that behaviorally we are doing really well right now. Sure, Charlie is prone to irrational toddler outbursts when he is forced to leave the park, or stop standing on the couch. But his little tantrums usually last less than 10 seconds before he has moved on to something new. I anticipate that more sustained tantrums will come as he gets older, but now he is pretty mellow. Mellow in the sense that he is adaptable, but certainly not mellow when it comes to his activity level. He is on the move all day! I have noticed though, that over the past few weeks his attention span is getting longer. He will sit and play with blocks, or his shape sorter, or scribble with crayons, for close to 10 minutes at a time. This might not seem like a long time, but it is a marked improvement from the "new activity every 3 minutes" phase we'd been going through for what seemed like forever (in reality about 5 months, since he started walking!). He is also showing a renewed interest in books and can sit through whole books now (short ones!) without squirming away to play with something else.
We still have our same challenges, Charlie is not the most adventurous of eaters. He continues to like almost all fruit, almost no vegetables, and almost no meat. He would live on breakfast carbs (waffles!pancakes!bagels!) and fruit - and I guess he pretty much does by default - aka refusing to eat all other foods. It is seriously a victory to get the kid to eat a chicken nugget or some macaroni and cheese. Crazy! He was in the 5th percentile today for weight (21 lbs., 10 oz.), 77th for height, and 81st for head circumference. The doctor said that was perfectly perfect for his growth rate. He also passed his vision screening and autism screening with flying colors.
Dr. L gave us the go ahead to start introducing the potty to Charlie. We will see how it goes. I know opinions vary wildly on when to potty train. In the United States the average is around 3 years old, but in every other country it is virtually unheard of for a child not to be trained by age 2. I figure we will set out the potty, encourage him to use it, and see where it goes. If he is interested we will go ahead and try to train as he gets closer to 2. He loves to sit on the commode now (lid closed) and thinks he is such a big boy when he does.
I don't think we have much else to report. Charlie is such a sweet boy and is doing great. We had a little regression in sleep this past week, but all seems to be back to normal now. We are just trying to beat the heat this summer and get ready for a fun-filled Fall. Charlie starts back at preschool in a few weeks, and we have all sorts of fun things planned. Will try to blog more regularly too!
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