18 Months Old

Caleb is 18 months old today! I have been waiting to post about all of the little things he is doing so I could document it all at once. Bryan and I have been trying to keep track of all of Caleb's latest words and tricks.

• Caleb still has a great appetite. Although he eats almost anything we give him, his favorites are grapes, cheese, Nilla wafers, YoBaby organic yogurt, scrambled eggs, avocado, any kind of bread, and bananas.
  
  
• Caleb is still drinking 16-24 ounces of whole milk a day from a bottle in addition to a sippy cup of milk at mealtime. He has a mid-morning bottle, afternoon bottle and bottle before bed. I am starting to substitute one of those 'snack' bottles with a big boy snack so we can transition away from bottles.
  
  
• We brush Caleb's teeth twice a day although he's not a huge fan of the actual brushing part! He'd prefer to suck all the toothpaste off the toothbrush, chew on the toothbrush and then get to rinse it out in the sink while screaming with delight!
  
  
• Caleb is starting to learn how to drink from an open cup. Recently he became very interested in doing this and Bryan has been great about teaching him and letting him practice. We are still working on eating with a spoon but he is making definite progress!
  
  
• In the year that we have had Caleb, he has only been sick three times that I can think of, excluding the tummy troubles he had while we were in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Each time he's been sick he's never required antibiotics or run a fever! He's been a very healthy boy.
  
  
• Caleb loves Super Why on PBS and Sesame Street. He watches one of those shows each day so Mommy can take a shower!
  
  
• Caleb is 100% boy and so are his interests: trucks, balls, making noise, and playing outside! He loves to watch the trash truck, talk about trucks, read books about trucks.... the list goes on. He will watch any sport on tv with Bryan and also play with any type of ball.
  
  
• Caleb always wants to go outside! He acts brokenhearted if I ever open the front or back door and we don't end up going outside to play. He loves to play and explore outdoors!
  
  
• Caleb loves music and will listen to and dance to almost any kind! He will sing along to a little song we sing about ducks and sing the part about what the Mama duck says. If you ask him what song he wants to sing, he does the hand motion for "Twinkle Twinkle" and then wants you to sing/perform it for him. Caleb regularly stops in the middle of gymnastics to dance by rocking back and forth on hands and knees to "Feeling Hot! Hot! Hot!".
  
  
• Caleb loves his extended family! He loves it when we point out pictures of his grandparents and also wants to kiss them. Caleb always smiles when we show him pictures of his family! While he recognizes and loves all his grandparents, so far he has struggled with saying any of their grandparent names other than calling my dad "Bob Bob".
  
  
• Caleb adores our dog Sophie ("Phie!!!!!") and our cat Ginger, who he calls "Caaaaaaaaaaaat!!!!". He screams out caaaaaaaaaaaat! anytime he sees her or hears her bell. Luckily she is smart enough to run when she hears him barreling towards her ;)
  
  
• Caleb is still attached to Dog Dog and now a new kitty that looks like Ginger, who he will also refer to as something that sounds like Cat Cat, or maybe he's trying to say Kitty Cat? We're not sure yet.
  
  
• Caleb loves to give kisses and blow kisses. He will often do this on command and has gotten so much more affectionate with Bryan and me. This morning when I got him out of his crib he put his hands on my cheeks and gave me a big kiss on the lips, first thing in the morning! He melts my heart :)
  
  
• Caleb is repeating more and more words that we say. Some of his recent words are: baseball, pumpkin, pee pee, poo poo, and of course trash truck.
  
  
• Caleb loves all things that go and can identify firetruck, trash truck, a regular truck, car, boat and train. He has sound effects for each and often pretends that food items are an airplane or a car.
  
  
• We can tell that Caleb's cognitive ability is really getting stronger as he is able to identify so many objects in books and understand what we are asking him to do.
  

We are so proud of Caleb and how much he continues to learn and grow! On Monday I will take him in for his 18 month well child check up and we'll get to see how much he weighs and how tall he is!