21 Month Summary

My friend and I got into a discussion the other day over how we describe our sons' ages. She refers to her 21 month old as ‘almost 2’ and I’ve heard other parents with kids Forest’s age say things like ‘2 in October’. I’m strictly a month girl. This is one of those things that slightly annoyed me before I had Forest, but now I just feel like there is a large disparity between a 21 month old and a 2 year old so to refer to them as ‘almost 2’ when they are actually just as close to being  1.5 is a bit misleading. 

I have lots of friends make comments like ‘oh you are so good that you are still keeping track of his monthly photos’ when I know in their heads they are thinking ‘you are so LAME for still keeping track of his monthly photos. Everyone knows once they turn 12 months your baby is old news.’ But the reality is that Forest may be the only baby/toddler I ever have so he’s got the added bonus of being my first and my youngest, which means I tend to be slightly obsessive about documenting everything and soaking it all up. Plus, I'll embrace any excuse for a photo shoot.

I promise once he turns 2 I will be way less annoying and start referring to his age like a normal person like ‘just turned 2, about to be 2.5, 3 in October, etc.’ But for now he’s still a baby and I will accurately disclose his age as such to anyone who asks. 

Jon and I actually got into this debate about 2 weeks ago. He kept saying that Forest was ‘almost 2’ and finally I was like ‘Stop saying that! He’s not even 21 months.’ And he was like ‘Oh come on, he is almost 21 months’ and I was like ‘No he isn’t. He is more like 20.58 months’ and Jon was freaked out (and slightly impressed) when he got the calculator out and discovered that I was right on the money. So maybe I have some issues...

Either way this is what life is like with a 21 month old (who is 3 months away from being 2, just to be clear. I don’t hear any parents of 9 month olds saying that their babies are almost 1. Just sayin’.) 

1) Favorite Book. Old Macdonald Has A Farm ( or E-I-E-I-O as he likes to call it). Jonathan’s parents recently sent Forest a care package full of books and he loves them all but this has been the biggest hit. It combines his favorite song with his two favorite things (books and farm animals).   

2) Favorite Toys. Blocks. Train set. Chalkboard. Markers. Puzzles. Anything puzzle or art related is his favorite right now. 

3) Favorite foods: Smoothies, pancakes, edamame, apples, spaghetti, cheddar bunnies, kidney beans, and Ruffles. 

4) New words. Y’all. It’s ridiculous. I’m trying to keep track but it’s becoming impossible. In the past month alone he has gained over 180 words (more than doubling his prior vocabulary),  bringing his total word count to about 370. He has also started stringing 2 sentences together (mainly things like ‘All done. Bye bye strawberries.’) and asks ‘what’s that?’ when he wants to know the name of something or "where's ____" if he is looking for something/someone. 

We took him to the zoo and he spat out ‘lemur’ and ‘jaguar’ like it was no big thing. He’s just a sponge and can repeat almost anything we say. Some of his words can still be a little tricky for an outside observer to decode but his enunciation improves everyday. A big milestone this month is he started saying his own name. 

Some other words (I won’t list them all!) he acquired this month are: Goose, wagon, helper, open, paint, sorry, mail, hiding, sandwich, monkey, xylophone, spinach, trashcan, robot, Target, Gym, erase, doctor, sunglasses, Lamb, sleep, timeout (ha!), hang, sweet, kiss, Pops , Ryan, Church, broccoli, Lion, bug, Edamame, puzzle, grapes, queen, nap, Amen, and crayon. 

5) New skills: He loves the ABC song and will fill in the blanks if you pause while singing it. Apart from the song, he can usually identify the uppercase letters: A, F, T, U, H, D, X, O, S, P and  Z. He is sort of counting as well. Just the other day he counted to 4 spontaneously while playing with his blocks, and usually he can answer the question 'how many?' if it's under 3 things.

If prompted he can kind of count to 10.  Jon’s parents also sent a counting book in his most recent care package and if you count ‘1, 2, 3, 4, ….’ He will fill in ‘5!’, but he won’t spontaneously count to 5. After 4, the only numbers he will say consecutively are 8,9, 10 if you lead him off by first counting to 7. 

He can also draw an ‘A’ and an ‘O’. His penmanship could use some work, but it’s pretty impressive that he has the fine motor skills to manipulate a writing instrument like that at his age. Fine motor skills have always been his jam! 

He’s getting better at pushing his pants down, but we still need to work on this skill before we are ready to start potty training. He has finally mastered jumping and is our little jumping bean. He’s also getting quite adept at climbing and has spent the month learning to climb more types of ladders and even a rock wall. 

It’s funny because despite his ability to climb he just doesn’t have much of a desire to, which we are so thankful for. He's challenging in plenty of other ways, so I'm glad at least we can say he's not much of a climber....;)

Other Observations:  Forest is very good about cleaning up after himself, and barely has to be prompted. He will even sing the 'Tidy Up' song to himself. 

It’s the cutest thing when we pick him up from the gym daycare because he will always go put his toy back on the shelf before he comes over to us. His need to tidy up may be borderline compulsive though. 

At music last week, the instructor told the kiddos to pick up all the drums, but one toddler held on to hers. Forest was very bothered by this and tried to confiscate the drum from her which elicited a shriek from the girl in question. The teacher said the girl could hold on to the drum if she wanted and went ahead and carried the other drums to the cupboards. Forest was so upset by this that his little face crumpled and he ran to me and started wailing. He just couldn’t stand that not all the drums were put away. Whose child is this???? Me and Jon are both so messy! 

Forest loves his friends and really tries to engage with them and get them to play. His three best buds are Bryce, Eli and Ryan and he will ask for them when they are not around. The other day we told Forest that we were meeting Bryce and his momma at the zoo. When we got to the zoo 45 minutes later he immediately asked ‘Where’s Bryce?’. 

It’s just the sweetest thing. But those two are in swim lessons together and they are total rascals. They love to be mischievous and our swim teacher (who we love!) remarked that they are gonna be those kids that have to be separated in class. It is absolutely the truth! 

F's memory is incredible these days. Samson is on daily meds for a heart condition and every month we go and pick up his medicines from the vet office and I tell Forest we are going to see Samson’s doctor. This month when we pulled into the parking lot Forest said ‘doctor!’. Same thing the other day when we were running errands and we passed by the gym on our way. Forest said ‘No gym. Bye bye gym.’ It’s astonishing! 

His buddy Eli lives a few blocks away and we often walk by his house on our morning dog walks with Sam. The other day he said ‘Eli’ while we were walking and I thought he might have spotted Eli and his mom out on a stroll so I said ‘Forest where is Eli?’ and he pointed across the street to their house. Also, he has basically memorized Brown Bear, Brown Bear and he can tell you what animal is on the next page without looking. I’m telling you, soon he will be smarter than me! 

Stats: I have no clue, but I’m guessing 28 lbs and 35 inches. His rate of growth has slowed, which I think is pretty normal after 18 months. He's still tall and slim and wearing 2T clothes, as long as the pants have a cinch-able waist. He has a pair of 24 month shorts from Carter’s that aren’t adjustable and fall down anytime we put them on him. Luckily shorts don’t have the ‘high-water’ problem so he can wear 18-24 shorts just fine, but for pants, even his 2Ts are getting a bit short on him. Supermodel problems. 

Schedule: As usual, his schedule is still a bit crazy pants. But he is getting slightly more consistent. This was the first month in quite a while where I’d say he sleeps til around 7 almost every morning. His naps are still the wild card and some days will be 45 minutes and some days will be 3+ hours. You just never know what you’re gonna get. And it makes no sense because the days when you would think he’d be super tired he takes a short nap and the days when you think he isn’t gonna nap worth a darn he will have a major siesta. 

So in a nutshell: 7 AM wake up, 7:30 breakfast, 11 lunch, 12:30 nap, 2:30 2^nd lunch, 5:30 dinner, 6:40 bath and 7 bedtime. 

My struggles: Running away is still the biggest worry of mine. I think the root of it is that he wants us to chase him, He clued me in to this one day at the park by squealing with glee and yelling ‘catch me! Catch me!’ as he ran out of the playground. 

The whole: ‘we leave the playground if you run away’ rule was completely ineffective after 3 months of being consistent, so we have changed our tactic. All of the parks here have attached green spaces that usually house soccer/softball/cricket fields. As soon as we get to the park, we play ‘go, go, freeze’ in which we allow him to run and he has to stop when we yell ‘FREEZE!’. It helps to burn some of that initial excitement/energy off before we head to the playground. 

So far the results are a little mixed but he does seem to be more cooperative with playing on the play structures once he’s gotten to run and explore a bit first. It bothers me that he seems to be the only child who randomly runs off. The other kiddos seem to stick close to their parents or will at least come back when called. 

I want to think that ultimately it means Forest is confident and independent and adventurous which are all things I wish for him. It’s certainly getting easier as he gets older, but definitely still a struggle. I’m worried because next weekend I will be leaving him with my parents over night at their beach condo and I don’t want them to have to constantly be chasing after him on the beach. It’s not fun for anyone, not to mention unsafe. He just really has no fear of anything which is very disconcerting. 

Also, his tantrums are getting way worse. If he doesn’t want to cooperate he will just go limp noodle and throw his head back and cry. He’s still a pretty good shopper but will get fussy sometimes if he doesn’t have a distraction and will yell ‘go home!’ at the top of his lungs. I miss the days when he was content enough just to people watch wherever we went. 

My biggest rewards: Forest is just too sweet. He loves to give kisses and cuddle with his momma. Everytime that I escort him to Jonathan for bathtime he says ‘I want you’  with the most pitiful look on his face. Then he insists on giving me a kiss and then usually demands ‘again kiss momma’ before Jonathan finally gets him in the bath and then he calls ‘night night momma’ to me as I leave the room.   

Now he’s a daddy’s boy too so don’t go feeling sorry for Jonathan. When we were walking in the church parking lot the other day I grabbed onto Forest’s hand and reminded him that around cars he has to hold me or daddy’s hand. Well at that he dropped my hand like a hot potato and said ‘daddy's hand!’ and when I picked him up from the church nursery instead of saying ‘hi momma!’ he asked ‘where’s dada?’. Ha! He's also started exclaiming 'Daddy home!' when Jon gets home from work. It's pretty stinkin cute.

I also love that he loves to read and it thrills me to see him learn new things. He is coming out of his shell more and more everyday and his personality is just the best. He is silly and funny and smart and confident and full of curiosity and joy. 

He’s certainly still introverted around big groups or new people, but around people he knows he is a total show off. This is such a fun stage. I just love toddlers so much. I can’t believe I’m blessed enough to have one to call my own.