548 Days Old (18 mo)

In Mormon-land, when a child reaches 18 months, parents either cringe or throw their hands up and shout "hallelujah!". We are definitely in the hallelujah group. 18-month to 3-year-old children head to Nursery during the Sunday School portion of our services, which happily means church is enjoyable again (for everyone). The cringing parents generally have the sweet kids that don't want to let mom or dad go, and require a long transition into nursery.

Thankfully the lure of toys and older children had Jackson literally running down the hallway toward the Nursery door. The report came back with no tears (from his end) and only one or two hair pullings. When Mark picked Jackson up after Nursery, Mark felt he was 10 years older when Jackson handed him this:

I agree. Hard to imagine we're old enough to take home our child's art work. (If you notice the top/right red scribble is definitely a teacher trying to encourage Jackson to use the crayons on the paper and not just throw them all on the floor.)

Jackson had his "well" Doctor's visit today. I love those visits because, 1. we're not sick and 2. you learn the funny things your kid is doing are actual developmental mile stones. I was relieved and amused to find that developmentally he seems to be on track--
Does He:
Run?
Follow simple directions?
Use utensils?
Say 4-6 words?
Point to a body part?
Bring you objects for show?
Hug and kiss?

Check, check and check. My favorite are the hugs and kisses--sometimes I feel a little silly because I ask for them all day long. But the most surprising mile stone was the "bring you objects for show"--I feel like that's all he wants to do all day. Bring all his shoes to me one by one. All the diapers. All the pens. All the pots. Mark wondered why there was a jar of spices on our bed last night. All objects for show. All very messy, but all so cute.

My favorite new word(s) is "ah bah" which translates to "a book." I thought it was really advanced (with the two word thing going on) until I realized that's what we call it. It's never just "book" by itself, it's always "a book." Wild. The other seemingly impressive words of late are "up" and "down." Impressive, until I thought of all the toddlers who say that all day wanting to be picked up and put down. Still nice to go beyond nouns.

He acquired "down" through listening to his favorite book (which I love because it's a board book AND only 4 pages long). It is now a highly involved participatory book, and we love it.

(back view)

(with facial expressions)

And finally, to initiate him into the realm of 18-month old children, we decided to let him try root beer. He even did it a second time so we could capture it!