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You’re Mr. Independent now. You don’t want to eat anything unless you can feed it to yourself, and even then, you like playing with your food more than eating it most of the time. It’s very frustrating. You also like to scoop your food off of your high chair tray into the seat with you, which makes a terrible mess. But you are starting to get better with your fork and spoon, so hopefully you’ll start eating better soon. There’s only one food we can be sure you’ll eat every time we serve it to you, and that’s Great-Grandma’s macaroni and cheese. You can drink out of a sippy cup as well as a straw.
You’re a busy, busy boy. You run around all day long, climbing up onto the sofa and back down again. You love to build with your blocks and your Legos. You enjoy pulling every last DVD off the shelf, but occasionally, you’ll help me put them back on again. You love to dump things out. You push cars and trucks around the floor, and you’ve finally started pulling the bus Great-Grandma has at her house the way it’s meant to be pulled, instead of holding it up off the ground with the string over your head. We have to make you sit for a time-out sometimes when you touch things, like the lamp, that could hurt you. You do understand when we tell you not to do those things, but then you try to get around the “no” by putting on your cute face with your biggest smile, shaking your head as fast as you can.
We thought you’d be in your 12 month clothes forever, but you had a growth spurt right before Christmas. Most of your 12 month clothes are too small now, but some of your 18 month clothes are still too big. You need another haircut, because your hair keeps getting in your eyes. Grandma Debbie bought you some new sneakers today, since you keep taking your shoes off. These have Velcro and light up when you walk. You love them.
When you want to be tickled, you can now say tick-a tick-a tick-a. It’s absolutely adorable. You haven’t started using all that many more words, although you do have the k sound for drink and guh-guh-guh for snack, because it sounds a lot like cracker. You talk a lot, though, and you know exactly what you’re saying. You get frustrated when we don’t understand you, but we’re all trying to help you with that. You have a hand gesture with Grandma Kitty that means all done, and I hope you can start using it with us at home, too.
You like to climb up onto our laps and dance. You also like to play with my hair, but we need to work on not pulling it when you play with it. You give some excellent hugs. And sometimes you climb up just to sit with us and cuddle, which is very sweet.
You were sleeping through the night for a while, but you’ve recently started waking up again. We leave you some juice in your crib so you can take a quick drink and go back to sleep, but you’ve also been getting up every night and looking for a hug. It must be bad dreams or something. I do wish you could start sleeping better again, for all our sakes.
Toddler is a far better word for you than baby, now. I love you so much.
That’s me: Christina Gleason. I’m a writer, editor, and disability advocate. I'm a multiply disabled autistic lady doing my best in this world built for abled people. I’m a geek for grammar, fantasy, and casual gaming. I hate vegetables. I cannot reliably speak, so I’ll happily conduct business over email or messaging instead.
