My little squirts turned 18 months old today. I'm sure I've said this about every phase, but holy crap, I can't believe they are already 18 months old.
They are still shining through with their own personalities, Ben being the sensitive screeching child, and Grayson being the adventuring wiggly child. They are their own little yin and yang that complement each other nicely, except when they simply conflict, as do all children. They are good at creating their own entertainment, like head-butting each other as hard as they can while sitting in the shopping cart at Wal-Mart. It's all fun and games until someone puts your eye out, or cracks your skull open.
My little man Ben loves to copy everything we say. Not the words, so much as the intonation. I ask him to say "mama" and he follows with any two-syllabled combination of letters, except M-A-M-A. But he's got the tone right. He crawled up in the rocking chair today to read himself a book. He turned all the pages carefully one by one, and made animal sounds for each animal on the page. Sometimes his animal sounds and the animal actually coincided correctly. The tiger says 'roar', as does the lion, the bird, and the dolphin. The doggy says oof oof, and so does the horse. Only the cat says meow, except coming from Ben, there is no 'm', so really it's 'eow'. I can tell that language is coming, it's just taking some time. He likes playing catch with the balls, and playing in his new sandbox.
Grayson is not so much a talker as he is a doer. He is my little man that is into everything all of the time. There is no keeping him still or holding him back, unless I turn on his shows. As soon as Baby Einstien comes on he stops dead in his tracks and glues his eyes to the tv. He doesn't give up kisses or cuddles easily, but I've taught him to make the most of his long eyelashes by giving me "butterfly kisses", which make us both giggle. I was showing him a book that had little butterflies in the pictures, and when I pointed and said butterfly, I looked at him and he was batting his eyelashes. Today after I changed his diaper before dinner I just left his pants off and let him run around in his socks and onesie shirt, with the snaps around his bottom to keep the shirt on. I was making food in the kitchen, and he comes wandering in. Each step he took caused a funny knocking racket, and he was looking rather paunchy around the middle. So I unsnapped his onesie and out fell handfulls of megablocks and little plastic shape-sorter pieces.
The boys have a new-found interest in leaving the house. We got a sandbox for them as soon as they showed up in the toy store again for the season, and they now know there is something fun in the backyard. They also like it when I let them walk themselves out the door to get in the car, rather than being carried. So now I have to be careful when I yell either "you want to go for a ride" or "Let's go outside!" because both the dogs and the babies come running to see what's up. The babies mope hopelessly at the back door when the dogs get to go outside, and the dogs mope hopelessly at the front door when the babies get to go for a ride. I can ask the boys to sit down, so I can put there shoes on, and tell them dinner is ready, and they come running. Amy joked the other day that the boys are finally as smart as the dogs, and it's funny because it's true.
I love you little guys, we are so lucky to be your moms!
That part about them finally being as smart as the dogs is so funny! What cute boys Happy 18 months!
Posted by: becca | March 17, 2009 at 02:30 PM