17 months

I'm loving this age... for the most part. The tough part is the whining and tantrums. Already. I wasn't expecting it to be this bad so soon! Oh my gawd.

This month: Fall is by far my favourite season, and this year I've discovered a new reason to love it: harvest festivals at the many local family farms. Andrew and I have been to three so far and just might check out one more before the end of the month... and I have yet to get that perfect pumpkin patch picture! The kid just won't stay still for two seconds. He runs around saying "hi" to the cows and sheep, etc., and making his animal sounds. He loves the sandlot toys and the wagon rides and the straw mountains. So fun!

Food: I've been dragging my feet at the transition from bottles to sippy cups. A while ago, we switched to sippy cups for his afternoon milk, but he still had bottles in the morning and before bed. This month I switched his morning bottle to a sippy, and boy was he mad! Some mornings he still smacks the sippy out of my hand and won't touch it until he's in his booster seat eating his cereal.

Sleep schedule: We've pretty much completed the transition from two naps to one. He's been sleeping in until 8:00 most mornings and goes down for his nap around 12:30. It lasts anywhere from 1.5 to 3 hours. Yay!

Vocabulary: Last month's "weee?" has evolved into "whezeee?" ("where is it?"). He throws his hands up in the air in the universal "I don't know" gesture and looks around for... well, most of the time we don't know what he's looking for. But eventually he'll "find" whatever it is and hold it aloft, pronouncing "day-dehr!" ("there it is!"). He fell in love with my mom's dog, Riley, when we visited last weekend, and at least five times a day ever since, he says, "Whyeee! Whezeee?" So cute! Last month's ubiquitous "ah-den?" has pretty much disappeared, replaced by "up" and "more" and "uh-huh" while pointing at something he wants.

New "tricks": I was so impressed when he brought me his alphabet book, turned to the "M" page, and said, "mama!" ("monkey"). Then he said, "aww" and hugged it. The boy loves his monkeys! Since then he has also started pointing out the train ("choo-choo!") and the bus ("buhh").

And he's started blowing kisses! I tried to teach him to blow kisses a few months ago but hadn't mentioned it in a while. Then the other day I asked him for a kiss and he put his hand over his mouth and made a smooching noise. Where did that come from?? And he says "night-night" on a semi-nightly basis. LOVE IT!