18 months old & Easter

Another month down, many more milestones hit, and an ever-growing, hyperactive, toddler personality. And I must say, I am loving every single minute of it. This stage is definitely my favorite stage so far. I know I have said that many times in the past, but it just seems like the fun factor increases as each month passes. Not a day goes by now that Nathan doesn't do something that has me hysterically laughing.

We have been working on his animal sounds (he now knows dog-"oof", cow-"boo", and lion-"roar"), his manners (he now says "pleeease" when he wants something, instead of that annoying sound that made people think he was choking), eating with a fork and a spoon (which has resulted in some of the biggest messes I have ever seen), his numbers, and letters(5 is his favorite number and X is his favorite letter, for reasons we may never know). We still have a long way to go with his numbers and letters. Right now he really only knows what 1 and 5 look like and he will just point to things as someone else count them. He is starting to recognize letters too, but his favorite part is the ABC song. Several times a day, he sings nonsense words to the tune of the song. He is also talking more and more everyday. I gave up on trying to count how many words he knows. At this point it has to be between 50-100 words.

Nathan has also discovered his incredible love for airplanes this month. Side note: If you ever want to know what his favorite thing is at the moment, be the one that gets him from his crib when he wakes up. 99% of the time the first thing he will say to you is his favorite thing. First it was ball, then is was bubbles, now its airplane. Anyway, we took him to the RDU observation park for the first time this month. They have a little park, and an elevated deck that over looks their biggest runway. We watched the planes land and take off, and Nathan thought it was amazing. We will definitely be going back there.

We went to his 18 month well check up this week. Still a peanut as always. But after obtaining a copy of Mark's growth chart from when he was a baby, we discovered that he was a peanut too! In fact, they were almost exactly the same at this age. It made me and the doctor much less worried about it. He will probably be just like mark and be a "late bloomer". He weighed 21 lbs (5%) and was 32 inches tall (25-30%). And even though he may be small, he makes up for it in brains! The doctor was impressed with Nathan's communication and motor skills and said he is above the average 18 month old developmentally. I told him it is probably because he got sick of hearing mommy talk to herself all day, so he decided to talk back! :)


And last but not least, Easter was this past Sunday. The weekend before we went to an Easter Egg hunt put on by the town with Mark's parents. There were so many kids there and within minutes, all the eggs were gone. Thankfully, Mark was smart and ran out in the field like a child and put a bunch of the eggs in his pocket and threw them at Nathan's feet one at a time. Nathan's favorite thing he found at the egg hunt? An empty candy wrapper. As soon as he saw it, he threw all his eggs down and ran to the wrapper and was as happy as if he found a golden pacifier. Poor kid had no clue there was actual candy inside the eggs! Easter morning, Nathan woke up to a big basket from the Easter Bunny, and the Pardue family came over for an egg hunt and yummy food. It was another great holiday surrounded by all the people we love.