More growing up continues, as is expected, but always surprising how much can actually happen in just one month's time...
Drew continues to climb onto everything within and just beyond his limits. One of his favorite toys of the month is a large box that we've kept around - oh the climbing fun! He can now climb onto his little car without help, this we are happy about. He also frequently climbs onto the fireplace hearth & clammers onto the first step & happily jumps up & down while holding onto the gate, this we are not so happy about! He also has pulled himself up onto the stair rail, doing a modified chin up essentially - quite impressive, as long as we are there to help! He is finally confident & comfortable walking around the grass on his own - up until now, he's wanted one of us with him. But now he has no hesitation to explore on his own - yeah! With becoming more adventurous, shopping trips have become more eventful. We had the first, of what I'm sure will be many, trips of Drew trying to run away from Mommy. He was doing quite well playing in the dressing room, until all of a sudden, he discovered the space under the door, and before I knew it, he was crawling underneath, getting away! I grabbed his legs just in time, but this just made the game even more fun of course, so the rest of the clothes were tried on rather quickly in between chasing Drew around the dressing room. Mommy may need to re-think those trips with Drew for awhile!
Drew is officially in the 'running' category. He certainly has a normal walking speed, which can still be quite fast. But then yes, he is now running. He loves being chased - sometimes fun, sometimes dangerous! He is also loving stomping his feet around, side-stepping & just having a grand old time moving! We are happy to report that he continues to show such excitement playing with sports balls, learning to kick & dribble, throw & catch/trap a ball. We have all intentions of him being quite a sports player. Not that we won't love him either way, but really, it would be great if he loved sports! So far, it's looking good. Even his teachers at school tell us how excited he gets when he sees the bag of sports balls - he will emphatically point & yell "BAA!" until the dump them all out, and then he's in heaven!
His behavior seems to have more extremes lately - he's either super cooperative & fun & talkative, or in a real crabby mood, and seemingly impossible to handle. Thankfully, the former far outweighs the latter! He has been great lately about following our directions: running to his room/changing table when we say it's time to change his diaper, sits down to help get dressed, helps pick up toys, picks out his books at bedtime, sometimes he'll even help wipe up some of his spills at meal time, all sorts of wonderful things that we can ask him to do now & he understands AND he does it! It's amazing! He gets to be more & more interactive every day it seems - making funny faces back & forth, 'talking' lots to us & even on Skype with Nana & Grandpa. He gets SO excited when the laptop makes an appearance and he hears the familiar sound of ringing, and then, poof, they appear, and he just squeals with delight! It's quite hilarious! He is also getting better at expressing his needs, which often get communicated by taking one of us by the hand, even if we are sitting on the floor, and making us get up & follow him to whatever it is he needs! He also makes it known when he has something important to say, needs our attention, or just wants to join in the conversation when he tilts his head back & talks really quite loudly (as can be seen below) - it can be quite hilarious!
He knows more & more body parts now, and is a favorite game to play. It's fun to ask where his hands are, as we waves them at us, and when asked where his feet are, he picks them up & stomps, and to find his nose, he sniffs - so cute! He has taken to waving bye to planes when he hears them go overhead, and loves to make their sound as he moves his hand around, imitating them flying - wwshh!He truly recognizes home now when we are driving back from daycare or errands. He always starts saying "Da-Da" when we get near, and as we pull into the garage, he is straining to see if Daddy is going to greet us at the door. Sometimes we beat him home, so we'll go get the mail (another favorite activity) & if we are lucky, Daddy will be driving home while we are out - boy, that is exciting! He recognizes Daddy's car from afar, starts waving, laughing, yelling Da-Da & runs to meet him! Oh, just melts your heart, especially if you are Da-Da, but it even makes Ma-Ma smile! To see the love between my two boys is just hard to beat.
He has loved getting his teeth brushed (there are 12 now!), at first he thought it tickled we think. Now it's just fun, but unfortunately the fun has progressed to biting mom's finger, so we have graduated to a real toothbrush! This is just an example of the little things that I never thought of before being a mom, but now it seems like such a big thing to be doing - he's big enough for a toothbrush - he's growing up! He is also working hard at using his own spoon these days. He's getting much better at controlling it & can get a majority, if not all, of the food in his mouth. Though, he does love to simply bang it on the highchair tray for a good portion every meal, but he comes back to eating with some helpful redirection!
Two sets of ear infections and lots of colds have led to some interesting gains. He is much better at tolerating saline in the nose, quite cooperatively plays along, and puts the cap back on. He is also relatively good at blowing his nose. Now, I mean this relative to what I would expect at 16 months. He blows it often times without the tissue nearby, but the fact that he does it seems impressive to us. When we walk toward the tissue box, he usually gives a pre-emptive blow, so we just have to do the follow up wipe. Kind of silly, well, really silly maybe, but again, a small thing that makes a difference, and an impression on us! We are also signed up to see the ENT again in December, with a high probability of getting tubes in his ears. We really don't want a repeat of last winter if we can help it!
We celebrated Thanksgiving in Austin this year with Grandpa, Nana, Uncle Kevin, the Seller family, the Pruitt family, and Mommy's second cousin Nicole, Nicole's mom Debbie & Nicole's boyfriend Baker. Drew did relatively well traveling, though it's not a part of any trip that we look forward to. But he did great meeting & playing with everyone. By the end of the day, he was pretty much friends with everyone, but especially Jake! Jake did such a great job helping entertain Drew & Drew loved every minute of it - it was so fun to see them interact. Jake is 6 years old, just old enough to realize that he has to be the 'big boy' and help Drew play & figure things out, so it was wonderful!
When we got back home that weekend, we set up the Christmas decorations and let Drew help. Drew really liked all the ornaments and the lights on the tree, but not a big fan of the 'prickliness' of the tree itself. It is artificial, and we actually have 2. The one upstairs is the one for Drew - with 'kid friendly' ornaments, and such, we'll see how long this lasts! The one downstairs is the big, nice one. We will not be putting any ornaments on that tree this year - it just doesn't seem like a good idea at this point! But we do have some other kid-friendly decorations for Drew to play with - he especially likes the dancing/singing animals that Nana bought for us all last year. After the initial unknown, he has gotten quite good at getting them to play on his own & loves to dance along - we are happy it entertains him...the songs are already old!
