22 Month Summary

Man, I am really falling of the blogging wagon. Thanks for sticking with me! Forest’s naps have started getting a little shorter and I’m just having a hard time cramming all the things I need to do into a 60 minute window. Here is a quick snapshot at what life is like with a 22 month old in the house.   

1) Favorite Book: Go, Dog.  Go! by P.D. Eastman. 

When we returned from our trip to Louisiana, I noticed something troubling about Forest’s behavior: he no longer wanted to read books. Instead of 30 minutes of storytime after breakfast, he was asking for his colors and painting books. 

Suddenly I was struck with the thought that maybe he was ready for books for older kiddos and sure enough, when I pulled out the stack of books I had stored in the closet until he was ready for them, he was game for book reading once again. Now he always asks for Go, Dog. Go! when I announce it’s story time.   

2) Favorite Toys. He loves his Melissa and Doug Water Wow coloring books, his B. You H2Whoa writing tablet and his new Melissa and Doug Safari Truck. 

Anything to do with art, animals or modes of transportation is an instant hit with Forest. 

3) Favorite Foods. This hasn’t changed much. Smoothies, beans and spaghetti are always appreciated. 

4) New Words. I have been really bad about keeping track this month. We were just so busy and everyday he was saying way too many words to keep track of. I am officially no longer keeping a list now that he has reached the 500 word vocabulary count. Now I’m more focused on his conversational speech and sentences. He occasionally will put 2 sentences together like ‘Oh no! I dropped it!’, but mostly speaks in one or two word phrases. 

Sometimes it sounds like Tourette’s because he just spouts out random words that don’t seem to be connected. As his mom, I totally understand what he’s trying to say but outsiders are always perplexed. For instance, he might say: ‘Einstein. Ocean. Shark. Monkey. Tiger. Tropical Bird. No watch. Daniel Tiger.’ , which loosely translated means ‘I’d like to watch the Baby Einstein episode with the animals that live in the ocean and the rainforest, but if I can’t watch that then my second choice would be Daniel Tiger, please.’ Make sense? Ha!   

Some of his new words this month include: Spider, Mountain, Highchair, coffee, wolves, happy, tinkle, over, firefly, shopping, hot tub, change, yacht, web, tower, count. 

5) New Skills. Forest can now jump forward a few inches, he can consistently count to 4, randomly count to 10 (sometimes skipping 5,6,7)  swim a few feet independently, and identify all of the letters in his name and many other letters of the alphabet. 

He also can correctly identify the colors 'red', 'blue', and 'pink' about 85% of the time;). His movements are much more pre-schooler than toddler at this point. He’s super quick on his feet and hardly ever takes a tumble anymore. He loves music and sings along with almost all of the songs on the Raffi Pandora station. The cutest is when he sings “Ipsy Bipsy spider”. 

Other Observations: Forest has a HUGE personality. He is really friendly and chatty to everyone he meets. He is confident and fearless which can be heart-stopping at times, but I still think I’d prefer that to him being insecure and overly cautious. He enjoys being silly and will go above and beyond to try to get us to laugh. 

He has the most joyful spirit and is always full of positive energy. His laughter is borderline maniacal and I can't get enough of it. He is always busy-busy which is fun to watch but can be hard to keep up with. 

Luckily he is really good at independent play and entertaining himself so we get some down time in between marathon play sessions. 

He loves music and constantly asks for ‘tunes!’ anytime he sees my phone. He knows that ‘P’ stands for Pandora and loves the Raffi station, but is also pretty content with country or pop music. He also loves looking at ‘pictures’ of himself on my phone so anytime I try to film him doing anything cute or new, it ends up being a video of him spotting my phone and saying ‘pictures!’. I literally have about hundred videos just like this. 

Stats: I’m guessing 35 inches and around 29 lbs. He’s definitely had a growth spurt over the past month and is starting to chunk up a bit. We are considering changing him to lowfat milk soon.  

Schedule: Well I was excited to report to y’all that Forest has been eating and sleeping better than he had in months but in the last week that went out the window. So he was sleeping til 7 nearly every morning (sometimes even 7:30!) and then taking a 2 hour nap on most days, but for the past week he’s mostly been waking up around 6:30 and taking an hour nap. Sigh. 

So our days go something like this: Get out of bed at 7, eat breakfast right away, have a light lunch at 11, take a nap at 12:45/1 (nap anywhere from 1-3 hours, but usually closer to 1 hour), have 2^nd lunch around 2:30/3 and dinner at 5:30. In bed at 7. 

My struggles: I still struggle with his inconsistent napping and morning wake time. You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but it’s hard when he has a really good week and then I feel like his nice schedule slips out of my fingers. This month has been hard because I feel like I’ve been preoccupied with my own stuff and feel like I haven’t been as present with Forest as I’d like to be. 

I truly love being a stay-at-home-mom  but sometimes wish I had something else to identify me. I’m starting a weekly Bible Study next week and have started going to the café at the gym to work on photos or blogging while Forest is in the gym daycare. I’m starting to regret my decision not to enroll him in preschool this year, but we had our reasons and I think next Fall he will be more than ready. 

My biggest rewards: Forest is just the cutest. He cracks me up and melts my heart several times a day. I just love watching him develop from a baby into a little boy. 

Sure parts of it make me sad and nostalgic but I’m usually too fascinated by whatever new phase he’s entering to pay too much attention to the phase he’s leaving behind. Perhaps it’s my background in psychology that makes it so fascinating to me, especially the language development stuff. 

Alright, that’s about enough for this month.