Dear Brennen,
Another half a year down! I really can’t believe you are already 18 months old. You are such a wonderful, happy, energetic, outgoing little man. You bring so much happiness to our lives that I can’t even remember my life without you.
You are a talking machine. You are still usually only putting one or maybe two words together that we can understand, but this month you have started to kind of babble when you are trying to tell us something. You know exactly what you are saying, but you haven’t quite figured out how to put all your words together yet. You can identify almost all of your animals and you know what sounds they make. My favorite is when we ask you what a cat says. You make this really soft, sweet meow that is the most precious thing ever. Grandma started working on learning your letters with you. There is a video that you watch that goes through the alphabet and says “A is for apple, B is for ball, C is for cat” and so on. You know what every letter stands for! You are so smart and you don’t forget anything. You have started to ask what things are if you don’t know. You look right at me and say “this? Mommy, this?” or “that?”. It is so sweet! You have started to call me Mommy more than Mama this month. When you wake up in the morning or from your naps, you will just sit or stand in your crib and say Mama or Mommy until I come get you.
You have become a really picky eater which I am really not happy about at all. At the beginning of the month you didn’t want to try anything new and you spit out most anything that we could finally get you to try. You pretty much lived on granola bars and cereal for breakfast and hotdogs and chicken nuggets for lunch or dinner. Now, you will sometimes have a grilled cheese but that is about it. You still like most of your fruits and some veggies. You could live on crunchy snacks such as chips, crackers and pretzels. Towards the end of the month you have taken quite a liking to your veggies which makes us very happy. You love peas, carrots and broccoli! It seems you are getting a little less picky, but the doctor said this is extremely normal for your age!
You are still a wonderful sleeper. You love to read books before you go to bed and you still love for me to tickle you and talk to you when I put you in bed. You don’t really care for me to sing to you anymore. You like “X marks the spot”, the A,B,C’s and we do this thing where I tell you “Mama’s going night, night, Dada’s going night, night, Kaiser’s going night, night, Jaxon’s going night, night and Brennen needs to go night, night”. You will say all of our names which is so sweet!
Mommy and Daddy took their first vacation without you this month. We went to Oregon to visit some of Daddy’s family and were gone for 5 days and 4 nights. This was the first time Mommy was away from you for longer than 1 night. It was hard and I missed you, but it was good for us to enjoy some time together. By the end of the vacation I was happy to be home and back into our routine!
We have had pretty much amazing weather this whole month, so we have been trying to spend a lot of time outside which you still love! You love to find the squirrels in the front yard and usually call them bunnies. You are still so good around the dogs and they are great with you too. You will still kiss them goodnight and you just laugh if they lick your face. You will also tell them to “move” if they are laying in your way. I think you have heard Mommy tell them to “move” one too many times that you caught onto it! It is actually really funny because you get very serious!
You got to meet a new baby this month too! Mommy’s cousin Sheila had her baby boy, Shane. We took you to the hospital to see him and you were very interested until we tried to put him in your lap. Then you wanted nothing to do with him. I think you just enjoyed looking at him! Our second visit with them, you were a lot more comfortable with him and you even held him. You were very sweet and just wanted to pat his head and hug him!
You had your 18 month checkup with the doctor on October 17th and you weighed 21 lbs 5 oz. (5th percentile) and were 32¼ inches long (50th percentile). The doctor said you were very smart and ahead of the curve for your age! You had to get two shots (flu and tetanus) but you were a champ. You only cried for a minute. You did keep walking over to the door and saying “out” the whole appointment which made the doctor laugh. You are in 18 month clothes and size 5 shoes but will soon be in size 6. You are still in size 4 diapers during the day and 5 at night.
I just can’t believe how fast you are growing and how much of a big boy you have become. You are so much fun to be around and you have made our lives so wonderful! We love you so much sweet boy!
I love you to the moon and back,
Mommy
