Nathan had a burst of new words in the last week or two. He’s added: Outside, Go, Elmo, Cookie (for a cookie and Cookie Monster), Bye Bye, Hello, Hot, Hat, Hop (he calls Bunnies Hop and will say it and bounce if you mention bunnies or frogs), Cheese, Um, Bicycle, Baby, More, and we think we heard Shoe.
And he also has a few two-word phrases now: Airplane Go, All Gone & What’s this.

Total word list:
Dog, Duck, Cat, Fish, Daddy, Mama, Ball, Apple, Cracker, Airplane, Hi, Up, No, Thank you, Opa, Outside, Go, Elmo, Cookie, Bye Bye, Hello, Hot, Hat, Hop, Cheese, Um, Bicycle, Baby, More, Shoe?, What’s This, All Gone.

And we can add clucking like a chicken to the list of animal sounds, and he learned the sign for bird so when he quacks he puts his hand up to his mouth to make the sign.

The two word phrase was pretty exciting to hear. He said Airplane Go first. We’re still not sure if it means “The airplanes gone”, or “Where’d the airplane go”, or maybe both, but he says it after he sees an airplane fly over and disappear.

There are probably other words we haven’t deciphered yet. I want to keep track of as many as I can, but I just read that he may start adding multiple words per day soon, so that might be the end of the lists.

Nathan’s doing other new things too, like starting to try to jump up, climbing more, and feeding himself (separate post to come on that). He likes to try to walk up the stairs like we do. He loves looking at pictures of his classmates that the teachers sent home, riding on his bike, reading books and looking for airplanes outside.

Nathan had his first (very cute) go at dress-up the other day. He went into some of his lower dresser drawers and pulled out the PJ bottoms and swim hat first. After he walked around in that for awhile, he went back in and pulled out the sweater and olive hat. Both times he handed us the stuff to get help putting it on. Silly boy.

Nathan now has 9 teeth- 4 on the top front, 3 on the bottom, and 2 top molars. We’re trying to get into the habit of brushing them nightly. Nathan loves chewing on the toothbrush, but we’re still working on letting “Mommy brush your teeth first, then you can have a turn.”

As for food, Nathan’s gotten much better about trying new things. Blueberries are definitely his favorite food of the moment. But he also eats grapes, cantalope and peas, and he actually liked spaghetti for the first time the other night. He likes the other kid staples too…grilled cheese, hot dogs, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, etc. Nathan’s still working on mastering utensils. He’s good at dipping the spoon, and then putting it in his mouth, and has recently started using a fork. He still needs some help getting food on the fork, but he’s getting the hang of it. We have also started having him eat at the table with us sometimes. It’s messier but I think he likes it. Also, I think we’re just about done with bottles. He was still getting one in the morning, but we’ve been slipping in a sippy cup here and there instead. He doesn’t drink as much from it yet, but I think we’re going to try going all sippy cups and see how he does.

Eating at the table

Fun with Spaghetti

Telling us he’s “All Done!”. (He turns his hands out like that to let us know he’s done eating.)

So, two long posts of updates, but Im sure I’ll have more to add before long!

Nathan is saying and doing so many new things all of a sudden. I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, but I still find myself amazed every time a new word comes out of his mouth or he does something unexpected. I have lots of new things to report on, so I decided to do two separate posts.

In just the last week or so he’s added the words Cracker, we think Airplane, and maybe Car and Paci. And if you ask “what does (insert animal here) say?”, he can quack like a duck, moo like a cow, buzz like a bee, hoot like an owl, hiss like a snake, roar like a lion, and bark like a dog. I could barely contain myself the other morning when we were reading “Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?” and he buzzed and hooted at the appropriate times, and then when we got to where Mr. Brown knocks, Nathan took his little fist and knocked on the book. So all the words now are Dog, Duck, Cat, Fish, Daddy, Ma/Mommy, Ball, Apple, Cracker, Airplane, Car(?) and Paci(?), plus the 7 animal noises.

In the last month or so we’ve noticed that Nathan’s started listening to us when we ask him to do things…most of the time at least….for example, putting back the magnets he just threw off the fridge. If we ask him to pick them up and maybe pick one up to show him, he’ll start picking them up too. I like to keep fantasizing that he’ll always love to help out and listen to us without complaint, but since I doubt that’s possible, I’ll enjoy this while I can and cheer loudly when he does it.

More than just listening to what we ask, it’s amazing how much he understands. If we ask where his belly is, Nathan will lift up his shirt and point to his belly. He does that with a lot of body parts actually, like his nose, eyes, head, mouth, ears and toes. Nathan signs Please if he wants something, like if he brings a book over that he wants us to read, or if we ask him if he wants milk or something to eat. He doesn’t really sign More anymore, but signing Please seems to mean please, more, or that he wants something.

Showing me his belly

Signing Please

Nathan still loves to read and be read to. A lot of our evenings are comprised of Nathan bringing us book after book, or asking us to read the same book over and over and over. He also likes to look at books himself more than he used to, which is nice to see. If we ask where pictures of things are he can point them out. And sometimes if we ask what something is, if it’s a word he knows, he can tell us. He makes some great sounds when he’s “talking”. He’ll just babble away, sometimes pointing at things, like what he’s saying should make perfect sense. He does this a lot on the nightly walks we’ve been taking on our street. It’s a good way to spend some of the time between dinner and bedtime when he gets more restless, and he loves looking for squirrels, birds and especially airplanes. He hears the airplanes way before I do and always points them out to me.

Pointing to an Airplane

(Like the shirt? It’s a Stegosaurus. Get it?)

Nathan’s been blowing kisses when he says goodbye and gives hugs in greeting, if we ask for one, or sometimes just because he wants to. He’s gotten a little more affectionate as he’s gotten older, which is nice. I hope that isn’t a passing phase.

We started putting a silkie in bed with Nathan some months ago and he’s now pretty attached to it. When he’s tired or needs some comfort he’ll go pull it out of his crib and drag it around the house. He gets pretty upset if he goes to look for it and it’s not there, so we have to keep track of it. Unfortunately, the silkie often goes hand in hand with wanting a paci. I think the pacifier is helping a lot with teething discomfort, so we aren’t being very strict with how much he uses it right now. I found two top molars poking out the other night and I’d imagine those suckers would not feel pleasant coming in.

Another comfort thing has been a thick fleece blanket that Nathan’s Big Mom Mom, Elaine, gave me at my shower. He didn’t use it much until he was sick a month or so ago. For those few days Id lay it on the floor with a pillow so he could rest, and since then he pulls it off the couch whenever he’s tired so he can lay on it. Sometimes it’s just for a second, like he needs a little breather, and that’s enough to keep him going.

More on food and teeth in another post…

Over the weekend, Nathan started saying Apple. It sounds like “ah-poo” and at first he looked like he working really hard to get it out of his mouth. Last night when we were looking a book, he said “ah-poo” when I pointed to the apple, and I realized that he really was saying it and understanding what it is, so I clapped and cheered for him. After that he spent the rest of the evening walking around saying “ah-poo” like he was practicing.

Nathan’s got a few words under his belt now, but this was the first time I remember seeing him start using the word and working at getting it out. Soon Im sure he’ll be yelling “ah-poo” every time he sees an apple, just like he yells out the words for Duck or Dog when he sees them.

(Much to my joy, he’s also started saying Mommy more and actually using it to call for me.)

So we went to Ocean City this past weekend (post on that I am sure is coming from Danielle). While we were there we visited Candy Kitchen and were subjected to the kid-wants-something impulse purchase (not our first, we also had to buy a rubber duck in the grocery store because he saw it and started whining). They had a bunch of beanie babies at kid’s eye level and Nathan really wanted one. We found the husky one and bought it for him because he likes Fen so much.

Now he’s played with stuffed animals before but usually he was just casually interested, but this time he just loved it. He played with it most of the weekend and slept with it on the ride home. In fact as soon as we got home and came downstairs he took his new dog (Slushie) and put him in Fen’s crate and closed the door. Unfortunately I was too slow with the camera to catch that one.

Nathan giving Slushie a kiss

The ride home

This is Nathan’s way of saying No sometimes. Just a quick and quiet, “Nuh.”

“Nathan, do you want more milk?” “Nuh.”
“Nathan, do you want to go see Daddy?” “Nuh.”
“Nathan, do you want a cracker?” “Nuh.”

The other day Gary was asking me a bunch of questions that all had No answers (I dont remember what they were). Part way through, Nathan started answering with me. “Nuh.”

Sometimes he even says it when he means Yes. Sometimes he’ll even shake his head a little too. It’s cute, and much more pleasant than the yelling, wiggling fits where he REALLY means NO.

Daycare has been great at teaching Nathan sign language. He can say PLEASE and MORE really well and seems to understand them. They’re teaching him BIRD and we’re trying THANK YOU as well. We have started asking him to sign PLEASE if he asks us for something, and he’s started doing it on his own sometimes too. MORE he mostly uses when he wants more food. It’s very cool to see him communicate with us like that! He also sort of created his own sign if he wants to go outside by waving his hand toward the door, like he’s going bye bye. He loves to hang out in the front yard and watch birds and planes and cars.

He’s also saying a few words now (though in his own baby way):
Dog/ Doggy (Doh)
Daddy!
Duck (Du)
Cat/Kitty Cat
Ball
Fish (Shish)

And cutest of all, he blows kisses when he’s saying good bye to someone, or leaving a place. Its very cute when he blows Gary a kiss before we leave in the morning, and it makes my day when he blows me one as I leave him at daycare.