First Haircut

It was definitely time to say goodbye to the long hair that was always in his face. I was hesitant to get his hair cut because everyone told me it would take his baby look away. They were right, but he is such a handsome little man now!

17 Months!

Our baby is 17 months old today and we're left trying to figure out where our baby went. He is definitely a toddler now!

In addition to the 4 words we started saying earlier in the week, yesterday he said "bye-bye" and this morning he said banana, which came out "nana". He gets so proud of himself when he says real words :)

Other than the new words, not a lot going on with him. He's starting to act out a little more so we've been having some rough days. We're trying to stop the behavior now before it gets worse though. It's nothing terrible, but he thinks he always needs to be the center of attention. If Cody and I are trying to have a conversation he will start screaming over us so that we have to stop talking and talk to him, which is totally unacceptable! We all know he's not deprived of attention, that's for sure!

He's also very impatient. When he decides he's hungry, he expects food to be ready for him immediately. So, as I'm preparing his meal he'll hang on to my legs and scream until it's done. Again, not acceptable.

So, the last few days he's been a little cranky, but overall he really is a good little boy. We often let him walk when we go to the store instead of putting him in the cart and he is really well behaved. He doesn't touch stuff he's not supposed to and when he is allowed to touch something he is really good about putting it back where he got it when we ask him to.

Some of his favorite things right now are books, of course, and anything that's not actually one of his toys. He loves playing with "grown-up" things. He spends most of the day carrying around a frying pan. We'll ask him to fry an egg and he'll put the pan down, wiggle his fingers around in the middle of the pan and make a sizzle sound. Apparently he pays a lot more attention when we're cooking than we realized!

Up!

Other than mama and dada, of course, Jacob's first word was up. We've been thinking he was going to start spitting out words soon because he appeared to be trying to mimic things we were saying but they just wouldn't come out.

Then, finally, he wanted in his highchair so he was trying to pull the tray off and he said "Up". Now he wants "up" on everything. That was the start, now a week after he first said it he says "down", "ball" and "book" as well. Of course the last letters don't get pronounced most of the time, but it's obvious what he's trying to say.

Happy Halloween!

This year for Halloween we didn't do much but we did buy a costume for Jacob. We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house to "trick or treat" and to see Ed, Dani and Erik. It was fun seeing the boys together in their costumes. Jacob was a pirate and Erik was the Greatest American Hero. We just let them play there for a while and then we walked down the street to visit Great Grandma. It was raining so we didn't make any other stops.

We had dinner then headed home to hand out candy at our house. Jacob got some toddler-friendly treats and had fun playing with Erik. Maybe next year we'll let him trick or treat at the mall, but this year we didn't want him to have the candy anyway, so we skipped it.

I was a little disappointed I didn't get better pictures but here are the ones I got. Enjoy!

Need A Corona?

Earlier this evening Cody took the garbage out. That's not very interesting, but what he found when he took it out is. The garbage can had been out on the street since it just got emptied, but earlier today Cody brought it back up to the side of the house. When he opened up the lid to throw the bag of garbage in he was surprised to see the can wasn't empty. Instead he found a small black plastic bag with a brand new, unopened 6 pack of Corona and a pack of Marlboro Lights in it.

What do you make of this interesting find?

He Thinks He's A Cow

Jacob can't really talk, well not in words the rest of the world would understand, but he knows the meaning of so many words now! One of his favorite things to do at home is to look through all of his animal books. We can ask him where an animal is and he will find it in the book. He also has just started to be able to relate the name of an animal with the correct picture and make the sound the animal does. It's the cutest thing ever!

He can point out cows, goats, chickens, owls, elephants, dogs and cats. It seems there are more that he knows, but I'm drawing a blank at the moment! He can make the sounds of a cow, chicken, elephant and owl. All day today he was walking around the house mooing and bringing me all his toy cows.

Unrelated, but he also is getting really good at following simple commands. I can tell him to go put on his hat and he will stop everything, go find his hat, put it on and then resume what he was doing. It's funny because he tends to scatter his toys in every room of the house but if we tell him to go get something specific, he knows exactly where it is!

He's becoming such a big boy!

Bridge's Pets

As I've mentioned before, Jacob loves animals. He has several books about animals along with animal toys. We always talk to him about different animals and take him to see them in person when we can. We went to the pumpkin patch last week and we plan on doing that again before the end of the month, but we found a new place to go that is open year round........a pet store!

A lady at work told me about Bridge's Pets in Snohomish. She said it was the best pet store and told me I needed to take Jacob there, so we did. Wow, she was right. That place is huge and Jacob was so excited! The middle part of the store is stocked with tons of merchandise but the perimeter of the store is set up to house the animals. They even have separate rooms for the reptiles and fish. In the reptile room, along with the reptiles of course, they have a TV set up with a sitting area. The Jungle Book was playing and they had a huge stuffed gorilla and lion on the floor. Jacob would go and "crash" on the stuffed animals when he needed to rest after running several laps!

The fish room, or Water Garden, was definitely his favorite. The room was fairly large with a ton of different tanks. The bottom tanks were at floor level so they were perfect for Jacob to get a good look. The tanks are around the outside of the room and the middle part is full of waterfalls and greenery. Jacob ran laps in there looking at everything for almost an hour. By the time we left we could barely even stand up.....he was worn out!

We will definitely be going back there!