Eighteen Months

This little guy is 18 months old! 

Some things to know about this happy little dude.

He LOVES to be outside and would spend every waking moment outside if I let him. He loves to bring me his shoes and repeat "awside" and he is devastated if I take him outside only to put him in his car seat on our way out. 

We take daily walks to collect sticks in his truck, pick berries off the bushes, and throw rocks in the creek. He loves meeting dogs along the way and stopping to explore for any bugs.

He has been my running buddy the past couple of months and is always the perfect companion, never complaining and always happy to point out the birds, cars, dogs, and trucks along the route.

 Focused: Charlie has never been one to jump from toy to toy. He knows what he likes anything with wheels and books, and spends 90 % of his time doing either of these things. (The other 10% of his day is made up of chilling in his booster seat eating or just hanging out. He oddly adores that chair). He plays very well independently and will sit with a stack of books for a half an hour at a time reading them by himself.

Here he is intently watching construction trucks at a recent park visit. He was glued to this spot for 25 minutes!

He studies his books with such intent.

Affectionate: How blessed am I to have a snuggly baby? He freely dishes out hugs and kisses on demand and without asking. ( I should add, he freely shares hugs and kisses with Mom, Dad and other babies. This kid is a little on the shy side :) Whenever he is feeling sleepy, whether its snuggled on the couch or shopping in a store, he loves to lay his head on your shoulder and say "a song" until you sing to him.  Its the sweeting thing. And you will see me singing in public in the strangest of places for this sweet little one.

Blowing kisses

Trying to plant one on his lady friend

Songs on an evening family walk

Other random facts:

At 21 pounds, this kid is still on the skinny side, 10 percentile, but has the cutest lil belly around. 

At 18 months I feel like he have finally arrived at good night time sleeping habits. Hallelujah. Its been a  long year. 

He is a great communicator and probably has about 50 words in his vocabulary. 95% are only intelligible by me but he is very good at telling us what he needs and wants....or doesn't want His favorite word is probably "no" but some of my favorite words he says right are: ehmeno (his favorite book LMNO Peas), otter (water), affe (giraffe), basaball (basketball). The only TV he sees  (besides our terrible long sick week) is when Blakely has ESPN on the mornings before work. so whenever he sees a TV when we are out and about he always exclaims "basaball!" 

My other favorite is "burp". One day after drinking a cup of milk really fast he burped and got this huge grin on his face and looked up at me and said "burp". I have no idea where he learned this because we are not much of a burping family but now he tries to force a burp out all the time and he thinks its the funniest thing on the planet. What a boy! We have taught him to say "scuse me" afterwards so hopefully hes learning to be polite too?  I fear for my future though because after he learned how to burp with his mouth, we were in the tub when he made a gas bubble in the bath.You know from the other end :) Immediately he looked up at me giggling and said "burp".  What a stinker! but oh how I laughed.

Of course we are not all smiles and giggles around here. Charlie is quickly learning the art of a tantrum, and how to voice his strong opinions but I cant wait for the many future adventures with this awesome babe.