April 2nd – 19 months old!

Dear Landen,

You’re nineteen months old now.  Just one more and we’ll be in the 20’s!!  Whoa!!  You had your 18 month checkup at the beginning of the month and came out with a clean bill of health.  The doctor was very pleased that you’ve started speech therapy.  Your speech has already improved from when you were tested initially.  Here’s a list of the words you know and say on your own now:

• Key
• Shoe
• Cookie
• Cracker
• Nala (nahnah)
• More
• down (up)
• diaper (bypuh)
• water (bobuh)
• ball (bah)
• apple (babboh)
• uh-oh
• milk (meeoh)
• berry (beew, boowee)
• tah-too (thank you, not spontaneous, copies)
• banana (nana)
• socks (kah)
• Jake (suh with t in front?)
• cat (cah)
• all done/wahlanah
• book (book without k)
• hiiiiii
• bye
• pa-pah (papa, first syllable fast, only repeats)
• poop (puh or poo) and holds diaper

You say “hiiiiiiii” when we open the door to get you from your carseat.  You’ve started saying bye when it’s time to go and wave some, but not too much.  We’re working on it.  You can identify more of your body parts now: head, ear, eye, nose, mouth, tummy, feet, and elbow.

We have no idea where this came from but all of the sudden you have started running around the house bent over with your arms lifted up behind your back.  It’s hilarious!  You pick up the kitchen stool and take it with you all over the house.  You learned that the hand slot in the top makes it easier to carry.  You LOVE LOVE LOVE bubbles.  You did a really good job on your first time dying and hunting for Easter eggs.  You liked dropping the hard boiled eggs into the dye containers.  When you found hidden plastic eggs you liked to shake them and hear the contents rattle around.

On weekday mornings Daddy gets you dressed and then you both come into the bathroom to say hi to Mommy.  Mommy leaves the shower door open so you can slide it closed it, and she leaves the toilet lock undone so you can put it up.  You like having little jobs to be helpful.

For a couple of weeks you were waking up 2-3 times at night just for reassurance. Daddy would go lay you back down and you’d go right to sleep.  Thankfully you weren’t up for long but poor Daddy is tired!!  We’re still working on transitioning off of your bottles. You now get milk at lunch and dinner in a straw cup only. You don’t love it but you will usually drink some.  We haven’t tried to eliminate your bedtime bottle yet.  That one will be the hardest, and therefore the last to go!

We’re so proud of all your accomplishments this past month.  We love how your vocabulary is starting to flourish.  Your little voice in so sweet.  We can’t wait to hear what you have to say.  We love you!!