Ant diary: 18 months

Growth check: We had Ant's 18month appointment yesterday. He was 35 inches (98%), and 24lb 12oz (34%). Which makes him 4th percentile in weight for height. Very tall and skinny, although he looks perfectly well proportioned and not at all emaciated to me. His head size was 41%, which is about where he has been for a while. So that's all good.

Talking: Ant is getting closer and closer to real sentences. He's saying a lot of three word phrases now, and even four-word ones on a fairly regular basis. His first four-worder was "put it Diaper Champ" in response to me asking where we should put his dirty diaper. The other day it was "see ight on pees" (see light on, please). He seems to skip the L's rather than substituting for them. The best phrases have been "Mommy/Daddy, I ove you" - totally out of the blue. Awwwwwwww. Other advances with talking have been the occasional use of pronouns (I, me and my). Also, he added the ABC song to his repertoire. And when "pop goes the weasel" was playing at my sister's house the other day, just the tune, he said "pop the weasel" at the end of it. It is completely astonishing that all this stuff is already in there! He has also started "counting" - he gets the number 2, but I don't think anything beyond that. But he has memorized the sequence - I've heard him say "one two see" quite a few times, and "see sowah sive six seven" (funny how they all start with S), and for Mark he said "eight seven" counting backwards with the microwave. So I think he'll be putting those together soon. He also likes to kiss things (including his milk before I put it in the microwave), and says "mwah" as he does it, just like I do when kissing him. It's funny what little mimics they are!

Movement: Not too much new here. He has taken recently to spinning round and round in circles, often laughing the whole time. Very funny. He also can really ride his fire truck now, pushing himself all the way around the first floor, including turning and backing up. "beep beep beep".

Mental: Ant seems to have a very good memory for words in stories and songs. He can't yet seem to help me find things I'm missing though. I can't wait for that to come! I said last month that it seemed like he was starting to get shapes and colors. Shapes, definitely. He is easily able to get all the shapes into the shape sorter at Mom's house (except the heart, that proved to be a bit of a problem as there's only one way it can go in), and can find the correct shape. Colors he will occasionally get right, but not much more often than random chance. When he does or doesn't want to do something now, he really lets us know, mostly by throwing tantrums. He screams, arches his back, and occasionally has come close to throwing himself out of the arms of the person holding him. It has been particularly bad when we want to put him in the car seat, but he wants to play in the car instead. The doc said that we *cannot* let him play in the car anymore, because then he never knows when we go to the vehicle if it's to play or to go. Made a lot of sense to me. It's going to be tough though, because he really loves playing in there. We have spent hours!

Toys and games: I decided to pull out a couple of puzzles Ant had gotten for Xmas this month, without much expectation. Much to my surprise, he was able to get all the animals in the farm puzzle back in the right places (when I handed the pieces to him one by one), as well as each of the vehicles in the other puzzle. He had the most trouble with the airplane, which he really thought should go in upside down. He still loves his Donald Ducks, and has started to show more interest in having a blankie. Also still really enjoys the school bus, making/crashing towers, and playing in the car. He likes playing taking turns with various things - spoons/forks when we're feeding (we often swap - "Mommy's turn... Antee's turn"), or with the fire truck he sits on (he likes me to sit on it too, but man, the handles stick into my legs!), or taking turns twisting the net on the hockey set with Granny.

Feeding: This has been our first really rough month food-wise. He is turning his nose up at what we offer much more often, and has had a few meals that consist of either practically nothing or something I'd rather he not eat too much of, like cereal bars. One day he had a cereal bar for afternoon snack, then two more for supper. Ugh. He is still gaining weight at the rate of about 1lb/month though, so even when he barely eats I console myself with that.

Sleeping: Same as last month, mostly one nap except when he's under the weather. Going to bed at 7:30. Although I did a bad thing and taught him how to turn on the light in his room. Which means he does that when he wakes up ("ight ON" is what we hear through the monitor), and is no longer happy in his crib until 6:45, wanting to get up closer to 6:15. Bad mommy!!!

Personality: We went to visit our friends M, K and their son B (five weeks younger than Ant) Pres. day weekend. It was so interesting to see the differences between the two kids personality wise. B immediately warmed to me and Mark, and wanted each of us to pick him up quite often. Ant, on the other hand, A) didn't like it when I had B, and B) really was not interested in interacting with M or K. He was either doing something on his own (or with Brendan) or with Mark or me.