It seems like these monthly posts are coming faster and faster!  I can barely believe Isaac is right around the corner from a year and a half.  Where is the time flying off to?!

Five days ago, my little man turned 16 months.  I feel like I can barely take a breath lately – time is moving that fast.  If I blink I might miss something huge.  So much is happening in my little guy’s life right now.  Every day brings so many changes, it’s hard to note one down before the next comes along.

Isaac’s language explosion continues with a word or two a day.  He said “choo-choo” the other day, and I almost died from the cuteness.  Diaper has been shortened to “per”, and stop to “top”.  He loves repeating anything we say.  I was telling him over and over yesterday how tall he’d become since he was able to pull a dish of food right off the counter and set it on the floor and eat from it all while my back was turned (whoops!), and he just kept repeating “taw” every time I’d say tall.  The most impressive thing he’s said so far though, has to be “thank you”.  He says it every time I give him a piece of food, or something else that he’s asking for.  It’s absolutely amazing to me that he can put two words together like that!

I absolutely love to hear him talk.  I love hearing what comes out of his mouth, because it’s a window into what he’s thinking.  My 16 month old has THOUGHTS.  Of his OWN.  How cool is that?!

Mom and I took him to a toy store Saturday, looking for a couple special treats to take along on our upcoming road trip, and he had the most fun ever!  The first thing he saw when I set him down was a train table – he ran over, said “choo-choo!” and started playing.  Then he jumped on a little trampoline, pushed a grocery cart around, played with stuffed animals and a little kitchen set.  He was running from aisle to aisle, in circles all over the store – it was hilarious to watch.   When he got home and saw his Daddy, he launched into “storytelling mode”, talking and gesturing dramatically, and it was obvious that he was telling him all about his experience at the store from the amount of times he said “choo-choo!”, haha.  It was so cute :).

He still loves bringing me his shoes, then he’ll bring me mine and bring Mimi a pair and will walk over to the front door and start throwing his body against it, like “Take me on a walk already!”.  He always brings us a matched set.  He loves shoes in general – if he’s barefoot and he spies a pair of shoes, he’ll bring them to me, plop himself down with a huge groan, and ask me to put them on him.

Getting food in this kid has become pretty darn tricky lately.  He wants to feed himself completely.  And he wants to use a fork or a spoon to do it.  It’s so frustrating, because he can barely get any food into his mouth, but he insists on doing it himself and if you try to help him he’ll yell and stop eating altogether.  He luckily will still drink his homemade yogurt from a cup, and occasionally some kind of soup also, and if I’m prepping lunch or dinner I can sometimes feed him from the counter and he’ll eat that way.  I’m stuck watching him try and spear scrambled eggs with his baby fork every morning (he got four pieces into his mouth today!).  We’ve tried every trick in the book, but the little guy is just too busy to worry about food these days.

Isaac is in love with his books.  He reads them to himself, pointing at pictures and talking about what he sees on the page, and he loves bringing a handful of books for us to read to him.  Yesterday I read him Go Dog Go! at least 10 times in a row, and it is hands-down his favorite book right now.  He also loves The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss, I am a Bunny, The Big Red Barn and Goodnight Moon.  We have about a gadjillion board books and the floor is constantly littered with them, as he likes to carry them around the house.

With his picture books, he loves to point at each item on the page so you can tell him what it is, but he can identify the birds, dogs and cats on each page himself and will say or do the sign for each one.  He’s getting better at sitting still for the stories, and he definitely prefers the rhyming ones the best.

He’s so much stronger than he was even a couple weeks ago.  He can run now, and keeps me on my toes trying to catch up to him.  We love taking walks around the neighborhood, and when he’s not stopping and inspecting every single tree, he’s chasing around the neighbor kids and making friends with all the neighborhood doggies.  It can easily take us 45 minutes to walk around our tiny little cul-de-sac, with everything there is to see and do.  He likes traipsing through the grass, and will sit himself down in a neighbor’s yard to pull grass or play with the rocks he’s collected along the way.

Sunday was stormy on and off all day, and we took him out in between thunderstorms to splash in the puddles and burn off a little energy.  It was his first time splashing in a proper, deep puddle!

I feel so blessed to be able to be home with him, seeing him experience things for the first time and watching his wonder and excitement.  Every day brings so many new things for him to learn, and I am so in awe of my smart little guy!