Liam is 18 months old today.
There are so many new things to talk about, because the past six months have been full of changes for Liam. He’s at a new daycare with a bigger group of kids his own age, and he keeps coming home with new words he’s learned from his friends. The new environment is helping him grow, and his teachers genuinely care about him, nicknaming him “Lima Bean” and arguing over who gets to hold him at the morning drop-off.
He’s wearing 18-month clothes now and it’s so strange to see how grownup he looks when he’s wearing collared shirts and jeans and little sneakers. He just got a haircut and I swear I see a teenager under there. Especially when he’s ignoring me. I’m going to keep him in footie pajamas FOREVER so he’ll at least be my tiny sweet baby at night.
We have a pretty good eater, who’s eager to master spoons and forks and feed himself without our help. Unfortunately, his picky phase has continued and there’s a lot he won’t touch. Sometimes it’s about taste, sometimes it’s texture, and sometimes it’s that he forgets he loves cheese. Acceptable and unacceptable foods change week to week, so I’ve learned it’s better to go back to the store for more grapes on a grapes-are-good week, rather than buying a huge bag of them and realizing grapes-are-gross week arrived somewhere around Tuesday afternoon. He’s not a fan of veggies at all, and he hates chicken, but I’m hoping it’s just the lack of molars that are making those foods harder to handle. Yet Goldfish crackers somehow go down just fine. Hmmmm.
Also acceptable: Ah-PUUUHs.
I still get some green (and orange) stuff in him by putting it into pancakes or omelets, or taking a hint from the multimillion-dollar snack-pouch industry and mixing veggie purees with a good dose of applesauce. He loves peanut butter (ba-buh!), meatballs (ba-baw!), and waffles (faffle!). Loves to ask for them, anyway, frantically signing “more” only to yell “ah-dah” and shove the highchair tray once I hand them over. Of course, if we take away the tray, he reaches out to stuff one more chunk of waffle in his grinning face. I suspect this is the start of the crazy toddler era. But he’s right in the middle of the chart for height and weight so far: 26 pounds at his last weigh-in. So at least he’s eating enough!
Liam’s favorite toys right now aren’t toys. Sorry, everyone who keeps buying him wonderful toys! I’m sure he’ll come around! For now, though, he’s obsessed with random household objects, going so far as to throw his first tantrum ever over the living room clock, which we refused to take off the wall for him to play with. He calls clocks ney-neys, he spots them everywhere, and he wants them ALL. It would be cute if it wasn’t vaguely unsettling. He can’t have clocks, but we do let him have his next-best love, the kitchen broom, because he yells BWOOO and reaches for it every time we walk past it, and that’s hard to say no to.
BWOOO being used ow-kai (outside)
His housekeeping training will begin as soon as he’s steady on his feet, because I could use the help sweeping up all the faffle bits on the kitchen floor. He’s also into pots, hats, spoons, and putting things into containers and taking them back out again, over and over and over. He also likes balls (mostly for throwing or for container transfer), and any toy that makes music. Because he was better with signs than words for a while, we taught him a little finger-waggle as a sign for “music.” He uses it to ask for music, but now he also waves both his index fingers around, conducting an invisible orchestra, whenever music is playing.
He plays a lot of music, too, as long as you’re generous in your definition of music. He has a few rattles, some jingle bells, a “piano”, two tambourines, and a xylophone of his own, and he loves making a racket with them. I bought him a plastic recorder to add to his collection after seeing his delighted response to Dave playing the penny whistle and ocarina.
He’ll sit there and tootle away on it (just the one note) and then hand it off to each of us in turn. He loves the music boxes and the piano at his grandparents’ house, and he’s mesmerized when Dave pulls out the guitar or ukulele. Some of my favorite moments of the past couple of months have been watching my husband and my son play music together.
SO MANY BOOKS are being read in this house. We have at least a hundred, and I think we’ve been through them all a dozen times each. “Book” was one of his first words, and he’s constantly yanking books out of the bin in the play room and handing them to us for story time. His current favorites are books with baby pictures in them, and ones with textured illustrations to poke at (or lick, in the case of “smooth shiny water”). He’s starting to copy the hand movements I use when I read stories, like “up” or “pop” or “no-no.” That comes out when I read him his solar system book: he swoops his arms around to show me the rings around Saturn and lifts up his hands to demonstrate how BIIIIG Jupiter is. It’s just the best thing.
He’s got maybe 25 recognizable words, a half dozen animal sounds, and a few signs, and it’s wonderful to be able to communicate with him. He’s just started to show interest in letters, or at least the ABC’s song, which he demands by tapping any page with an alphabet on it, and saying “aiy-cee! aiy-cee!” He understands a ton, and is starting to make connections on his own, which means we’ve had to start being careful with what we say around him. If we slip up and use the real words instead of “round freezer breads” or “ground meat spheres,” there will be hell to pay if we don’t deliver his beloved foods immediately. He knows what NO means and he delights in wagging his finger at himself and saying nooooo, nooooo, as he’s about to eat cat food, crawl down the stairs, or stuff magnets into the gaps of the baseboard heaters.
He’s a great kid. Learning fast, starting to make his own decisions and put ideas together, and testing his limits. The next few months are going to be exciting and challenging as he gets a handle on walking and learns to communicate, and we find out more about what sort of little person we’re helping through the world. We’re very grateful for the village we have around us: friends and family, near and far, in person and on the phone and on the computer. So many people care about our family and want to see Liam succeed, but also to see us succeed as parents. It means so much to us to have so much support. Thank you.
