18 & 19 Months Old

James, you are 19 months old!  

(OK, almost 20 months old... but whose counting??)

I say this practically every month, but I still cannot get over how fast you are growing up!  It sometimes feels like just yesterday that we just brought you home from the hospital.

I am guessing you weigh around 29 pounds now, as you were 28 pounds exactly at your 18-month check-up.  You have started getting tall (finally!) and are now at 33 inches, which puts you in the 70%.  Your head is still huge and in the 90%!  You wear all sorts of sized clothes - from 18 months all the way up to 2T.  Your big head makes it hard to get some shirts on your head, so we always end up buying a larger size.  You also have a long torso with short legs (kinda like how Daddy is).  Your pants tend to get way too tight around the belly, while the length is too long.  I just can't win with your clothes!

In the last few weeks, your being a boy has really started to come through.  All you want to do is play with you cars, run them all over the furniture, crash them into each-other and watch them fall from the furniture.  You absolutely LOVE anything that moves... airplanes, buses, trucks and of course, cars!  You get so excited when we are out driving and you see a bus or an airplane, or "mare-plane" as you call it.

You also LOVE your tunnel.  We have to put it in the closet now when it is not in use, because if you see it, you will cry and cry for your "tun-L, tun-L."

You still LOVE Elmo.  You like to watch him on the iPad, your favorite videos of him are Elmo's Ducks or Elmo's "Hot N Cold" with Katy Perry.  You also watch some Yo Gabba Gabba videos and videos of other babies.  

I have said this before, but you are definitely stubborn.  You want what you want when you want it.  You do not like to cooperate (as you can see from the below outtakes of your monthly shots) and you make life a challenge sometimes - but I know (hope) that this is just a phase.

You are also still a very loving boy.  You still give great hugs and you still give us kisses.  You know how to say 'I Love You' now, although most times you forget to say the "you" and just say "I love."  You like having both mommy and daddy around - you tend to cry when one of us leaves the rooms.

At daycare you are now in the big boy classroom and while we had a very rough first couple weeks when we had to drop you off in the AM, you now have no problems.  You walk into school and practically run down the hallway and then once in your classroom, you usually gravitate towards the blocks or cars.  Sometimes you do whimper a little when we leave, but your teachers reassure me that you only do this for a minute or two.

I love when I get to pick you up from school every day.  You get SO excited when you see me and it always melts my heart.  You then grab my hand and we walk to the car, all while you wave at everyone on the way out.

Your vocabulary is growing by the day.  I have stopped jotting down words you know because I have lost track of them all.  Practically every day you will say something new and I always wonder how you know that word.  For example, it almost rained the other day and as soon as we got outside daycare you started yelling "rain, rain" - although it has been so dry here I can barely remember the last day it rained!

You bring so much joy to our lives little man and I cannot imagine what life would be like without you!  We are so very blessed to be your parents.

*And since I never did your 18 month update, the photos are below.