19-Month Update (a little late!)

Now that Grant's almost 19 and a half months old, I figured I needed to write about what he's doing at this age.

- In the past few days, Dean and I have started calling Grant "Dr. No." He says "no" all the time, to almost every question we ask him! Sometimes he knows what we're asking and he really means "no" (like when we suggest something he doesn't want to do). But other times, he'll also say no when we ask him general questions like "is your milk good?" About 10 days ago we were having a bad day and I lost my temper with him. Then I picked him up and apologized and asked, "will you forgive me?" He shook his head and (very sure of himself) said, "no." I know he didn't understand what I was asking him, so it didn't hurt my feelings.....it was more funny than anything!

- (Related to the last point)- When I can tell that Grant needs a diaper change, I'll ask him if he's gone poopy. He'll pull up his shirt on the side (without even looking down), shakes his head, and says very simply, "no." What a little liar!!

- One of his favorite things to say these days is "let's go!" When we're about to leave to go out, he loves to say this over and over again! It sounds more like "deh doh," but he's so proud of himself when he does it!

- He loves to wave and say "bye!" He does this when people are walking (or driving) away, but he also does it if he starts walking up the stairs (he'll look at us and do it). Or when we're in the front yard, he'll start walking down the sidewalk, looking back every 10 feet or so to wave and say goodbye. And lately, he likes to wave and say goodbye to his poopy (if it's dry enough in his diaper to flush it!). Then he'll pull some pieces of toilet paper and throw it down into the toilet behind it!

- If he hurts himself, he says "oww." Then he'll come up to me or Dean, stick out his hand or foot and expects us to kiss it!

- He knows the number two!! He'll go pick up two balls (or two of the same of anything), and he holds them up high on his chest and says "two!" We haven't tried teaching him how to count yet, and he hasn't figured out the number three yet!

- For a few months, he has enjoyed being chased. But lately, he runs straight into the dining room and hides in one corner of the dining room table.....every time! We pretend that we don't know where he is, and we'll look in a lot of places before "finding" him (or until he jumps out to scare us).

- I've pretty much gotten him down to one long nap per day....yay! He usually goes to sleep somewhere between 10:30am and noon, and he'll sleep for 1.5 to 2.5 hours. Bedtime has gotten a little later recently.....by the time I play with him in his crib, he usually is going to sleep right around 9pm. And he doesn't like to read many books.....he just wants to get in his crib and play!

- In mid-late June, his top and bottom canine teeth started poking through on the left side. Still no sign of the ones on the right....

- Some words he's just picked up: mower (he says "mow" when he sees any lawn mower), eye (he'll point to/poke our eyes and say it!), shoe, bike, boat two, brush (we've been painting and he loves to play with brushes). And I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of right now!

Here are some overdue pictures from a few weeks ago. During the first week of June, Grant and I went down to Moody Gardens' Palm Beach area with a few friends. I bought a season pass.....kids under 4 are free, and I only have to pay $25 for the entire summer. What a good deal! Moody Gardens is about 35 miles from our house, so I end up using about 4 gallons of gas to get there and back (which these days is pretty expensive!). But I'm going to try to go once every two weeks with him.....we already made our second trip last week, and I think we'll go when Dean takes a few days off around July 4.

The place is really neat.....it's like a water theme park designed especially for little kids. They have a couple of big pools, plus an area with slides and another area with all kinds of things that splash water all over them! Grant has been a little apprehensive when we first get there each time. And he's still not crazy about the slides, but last week he got to the point where he would just run out into the pools with no fear. Yikes!

Playing with Daddy on the couch later that night.......he fell while we were at Palm Beach and scraped up his nose pretty good (it will be more obvious in later pictures from our trip to AL).


My parents came to visit the following Monday, June 9. Grant entertained them for a while (it usually takes him a few minutes to warm up to visitors, but then he gets into show-off mode!). Then we went to the pool that afternoon. I don't have any pool pictures, but he had a great time and really enjoyed sitting in his float.

Afterwards, we came back to the house and Grant found my dad's shoes. He figured out how to put them on and was busy walking around with them on for the next ten minutes. Ever since, he has been enamored with shoes! He takes ours out of our closets and tries to put them on. It's especially funny looking when he grabs one of my strappy heeled shoes and attempts to wear those!!






My mom took videos of him, and he got very curious as to what she was looking at!

So proud of my little boy!

I am so proud of Grant.....he did wonderful in the nursery all week! His teachers were two ladies he's never stayed with before (Laura and Tina), and every day they said that he was "a joy to have". Wow!! We've never heard this comment when we've dropped Grant off before! He always cried the first few minutes, but then was able to calm down. I think a big difference was that this week, he was actually in a class with kids right around his age (and not 5-6 months younger, who aren't walking or are just starting to walk). So they went outside a lot to play, which was probably a good distraction for him.

Yesterday I accidentally spotted him (and he spotted me) while my VBS kids were in music time, and his class was taking a buggy ride. I went out and stood with them for a few minutes while they watched music. Tina (his teacher) told me that he had been a social butterfly.....he waved or pointed to people he recognized as he rode on the buggy. And when the songs played at music time, he'd shake side to side in his little seat.....this is his version of dancing (he doesn't do much more than this when he's standing up!).

At the end of every day, after I picked him up, he wanted to take off running around the halls. He'd try to walk in classrooms, push buttons on the elevator, and had so much energy even though it was almost 1pm and he hadn't slept all day! This alone was a sign that he had a good time.....usually he's so upset in the nursery that he's exhausted and doesn't want me to put him down for even a second.

Yay!! Hopefully this means he will do okay in mother's day out when I put him in (I'm trying to decide if I should do it in the fall or wait until January......).

Some pictures

Here are a couple of good "before" pictures, taken a few days before his haircut:
It's a little hard to tell on this sized picture, but his hair was SO long and straggly! This was after a trip to Galveston last Thursday, so that's why it was particularly bad looking! Margaret loaned me a bunch of her pregnancy clothes, and here Grant has decided to turn over the entire container onto our bedroom floor. That was fun to clean up!
After the haircut.....what a nice-looking boy! We made a cake last Sunday, and lucky Grant got to lick the spatula after Daddy finished making the icing! He likes to say "mmmm!" when he tastes something yummy these days!
I got my haircut too.....much shorter than I expected, but I love it (and it's very easy to fix!).

Pregnancy shot taken on Sunday.....just after Grant turned towards me and sprayed me with the hose!

Watering.....still his favorite activity.....even more than swinging!
As I think I said before, Lita (who cuts our hair) is like me and doesn't like for little boys to have super short hair. She was careful not to cut it too short in the back, so that it can still curl up a little. Here he's watering one of our roses.....this rose was almost dead a couple of months ago, and now it has a lot of flowers!

Small victory in the nursery!

Today was my first day to work at Vacation Bible School at our old church. We left this church a couple of months ago, but I still do a lot of stuff up there.....I have my Right at Home moms study there, and I'm planning on enrolling Grant in their Mother's Day Out in the fall.

Anyway, I wasn't really looking forward to today because VBS lasts from 8:15 to 12:30. Grant usually takes one long nap these days, but he's usually getting really tired by 11am or so. So I assumed he'd have a major meltdown in the nursery (he still doesn't do great in the nursery on a regular basis anyway). I told his teachers repeatedly to page me if he cried or needed to be held continuously after 11am.

While our group of kids were in music, I took a walk down Grant's hallway (I know, this is exactly what parents are NOT supposed to do!) to see if I could hear him crying, or to see if they were outside or on a buggy ride. This was at around 11:15....and sure enough, they were coming down the hallway in the buggy. I guessed wrong about which way they'd turn, and he saw me for a second and started crying. Thankfully he stopped a minute later as they kept walking! At 12:30 when VBS ended, I went to pick him up (and apologized profusely to his teachers for being a nosy parent). They said he did very well the entire day! He played a lot, ate snacks, and was very good! He was standing at the doorway, not crying or fussing, when I came to pick him up. Wow!!!!

Hopefully this will continue tomorrow.....we have Wednesday and Friday still to go, but I was so encouraged after today!