Twenty-One Months

Every time one of these “birthday” posts rolls around, I am always amazed at how much I have to write about concerning Riley’s development and personality. He certainly is an ever-changing little boy, and I can’t believe he’s only three short months away from turning TWO!

At 21 months, Riley weighs 29.2 pounds and stands about 34.5 inches tall.

Here’s what I want to remember about this past month:

• He tried a few new foods: orange juice, capers, cannellini beans, jicama, prosciutto, pastrami, oyster, feta, calamari. His appetite decreased somewhat this month, especially at dinner. He also refused a few of his favorite foods, which I’m hoping changes soon. Oh, and I have started teaching him what the three meals of the day are.
• He loves snacks, though. He brings me bowls and his food of choice (dried blueberries, raisins, puffs, cereal) whenever he wants a snack, and he doesn’t take kindly to me telling him no if it’s too close to dinnertime (read: meltdowns).
• He is taking one nap each day, for 2-3 hours, and he’s still sleeping good at night (in bed by 7:30 or earlier). However, in the middle of this month, he started waking up in the middle of the night and also when we would go in to give him a paci. Luckily, he would always go right back to sleep, with little or no interference from us. But then he started waking up super early a couple of mornings, so I decided to try to shift his schedule a bit. Getting him into bed before 7pm seemed to help, so we’re going to try to stick to that.
• He has learned lots of names during the past few months, as well as where some of them live. He knows Kathleen is his music teacher; Kelvin is Nola’s mailman; Rosemary lives down the street from Nola; Eli, Ita, and Aunt Jackie live in Carolina; Uncle Bill lives in Maryland; Uncle Paul lives in California; Uncle Steve lives in Baton Rouge. And he loved when Aunt Dede, Uncle Dean, and Taylor came to visit this month, especially because Uncle Dean could lift him up high to touch the air vents.
• (He is obsessed with the air conditioner and the vents. Every time the A/C kicks on, he stops what he’s doing, listens, and then says “air condition on.” And he asks to touch the vents all the time. It’s really too bad I can’t reach them. Darn.)
• He’s basically speaking solely in sentences these days, and he’s even started using pronouns (most of the time correctly). When people find out how old he is, they’re always amazed at how well (and how much) he talks.
• He became really clingy to mama this month. He cried when I left him in the nursery at Jazzercise (he got better after going for a couple of weeks), he likes to be near me around strangers, and he even makes sure I’ll “come get you” after naps and at night-night.
• He’s getting really good at cleaning up when asked to do so. This may stem from music class, where Miss Kathleen sings the Clean-Up Song: “Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere. Clean up, clean up, everybody does their share.”
• His daddy is teaching him left and right and also how to count his fingers. We often ask him “how many?” and he’s starting to grasp the concept. He always starts with “1” and sometimes continues with “2, 3.” His wooden clock has been wonderful at teaching him numbers. QP even uses it to teach him in French and he usually names “9” and “10” in French (“neuf” and “dix”) instead of in English.
• He knows red means stop and green means go; he knows some big trucks say “beep, beep, beep” when they back up; he loves going “up the hill,” “around the curve,” and “down the hill” when we get on the interstate; he now says “dibble, dibble, dopp” when it’s raining (from Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You?); he knows he has to hold someone’s hand when he crosses the street (although he sometimes ignores this fact even though he knows “it’s dangerous”); he has learned to hold the railing to walk down the stairs; he knows how to walk on his tiptoes; he knows to blow on his food if it’s too hot.
• He’s still testing his limits with hitting, kicking, and throwing. This is what I struggle with the most with him. I know he’s pushing me to see how far he can go, but it’s frustrating! He’s gotta learn someday, though, so we’ll just keep chugging along with trying to teach him right and wrong.  
• After seeing a framed picture of him at his first birthday party, he asked for cake. I told him it wasn’t his birthday so we didn’t have any. Now whenever he sees the picture he says, “Cake? Not your birthday!”
• Every now and then he’ll giggle for a bit and then say, “Riley funny!”
• He was playing in his corner one day a couple of weeks ago, and he started calling me to get my attention because he obviously had to tell me something. “Mama. Mama?” “What, buddy?” “I playin’.” Stinkin’ cute.

Twenty-one months old!