23.5 months. Wait! What?!?

In a little more than 2 weeks, my baby is going to be two!  How this happened beats me.  The days seem so long, yet time goes by so very quickly.

We've been so blessed seeing our boy grow and change and I love him so much more as time passes. 

Here's where we seem to be at these days:

Favorite food: bananas, raisins, and ANYTHING that has to do with bread, grapes, black beans (but only out of the can black beans)

Favorite toy: Mr. Potato head, the farmer/animals/tractor from his farm Duplo Lego set, toy vacuum, toy lawn mower, screwdriver and batteries (seriously.), and books, books, books!, pretending to drive the car

Favorite show:  Curious George, Sesame Street (esp. when Elmo's World comes on), Cat in the Hat

Sleep:  We've been trying to move back his bed time because it was creeping later and later.  I'm aiming to get him into bed and out of his room by about 8:30.  Lately, it's been a challenge to get him to stay calm when we put him in his crib...most nights it's actually back to a major crisis at bedtime, as it was a few months back.  Not sure what the regression is about.  Most nights he's a good sleeper (although lately, he's had some middle of the night wakings, again, not sure why) and he'll normally sleep about 12 hours at night.  Naps have been around 1:30 and typically last 2 hours (although, again, again, he's been partying in there for an hour or more some days before falling asleep...if he actually does).

Words:  There are a lot now....and they are very random.  His vocabulary has really boomed over the past month, I'd say.  No really sentences, necessarily, but he's started repeating words that he's never said before.
The other night he pointed outside and said "dark".  I don't remember ever explaining to him about how it gets dark outside so it's neat that he told me.  Speaking of "neat", when he gets excited, he says "oh wow! neat!"  It makes me laugh.  It also cracks Jared and me up when he says he "booped".  We were playing at the park today and he stopped running, looked at me all serious, grabbed his bum, and said "uh oh! I booped!"  He kills me. 
He recently started saying "mine!" which we're obviously not excited about, but the more he's around other and older kids, he's going to learn from others.  I think it's instinctual as a toddler to want everything to be yours---we're not born knowing how to share---but I don't like him yanking something out of someone's hand or getting upset about something, saying "mine!".  We're working on it.

Something exciting:  He's started pointing out letters and naming them----all on his own!  I was absolutely floored when he started pointing out and telling me which letters are which--we've never even practiced that together!  M, N, and O seem to be his favorites.

Firsts: Tonight, we had our first family movie night and he really, really enjoyed it.  We watched "Cars".  He stayed interested through the whole thing--and it was a long movie!  It doesn't surprise me though, because the kid gets sucked into TV in a huge way!  I try to limit his total TV time a day to about an hour or so.  Unfortunately, it's increased from over the summer because it's been cold out.

He also had his first lollipop yesterday from Jake the Barber.  He did such a great job (with help of the PBS Kids app, of course!)  Last visit, he had a few licks of the lolli because Jake was watching haha but this time, I let him enjoy it as Daddy had his hair finished up.  Judah loved it and both my boys looks so handsome with their cuts :)


Until next time,

See you along the journey--