We’re out of the ‘teens!  Holy moly.  Isaac turned 20 months old 2 days before Christmas, and I’ve been working on this post for several weeks.  It’s just so hard to keep track of what he’s up to lately!

This kid cracks me up daily.  He is such a fun little guy to have around all day.  He helps me cook breakfast, helps with the dishes, loves to sweep and has his own broom, and feeds the doggies every morning.  He loves playing with his stuffed animals and new play kitchen, or climbing all over the dining room table and getting into all kinds of trouble.  He is busy, busy, busy!

He sleeps like an angel (something I never thought I’d say).  Thank goodness for that!  It’s so nice to be able to put him to bed at 7 and know he’ll be sound asleep until at least 6 or 7.

This boy can eat!  He usually has a snack of blueberries first thing in the morning while Mama is still waking up.  An hour later, I cook him a full breakfast – usually eggs (scrambled, fried, or in omelet form), some kind of breakfast meat, and an orange…maybe even some yogurt.  Or oatmeal with cream and an egg (mixed in).  After breakfast, he’ll usually want some more fruit – yesterday he ate a whole pear.  Then he has second breakfast with Mimi – usually more eggs or oatmeal.  After second breakfast, he usually snacks on almond butter, or peas, or whatever else I can find in the fridge for him.  Then he goes down for a nap.  After his nap, it’s time for lunch (leftover from the night before, or whatever I can pull out of the fridge).  Then at least a couple more snacks before an early dinner around 4:30.  Then he usually has another snack or two (some cheese or kefir, maybe) before calling it a day.  It is exhausting keeping up with his appetite!  He enjoys lots of different flavors, sauces, spices, but doesn’t really like to have things more than once or twice in a row.  He loves drinking water, plain and with lemon, herbal teas, kombucha, and kefir.

I had a stomach virus a couple weeks ago and didn’t cook him eggs one morning (the smell…ugh).  He saw the empty egg carton in the recycling on the front porch, pointed and yelled “eggy! eggy! more! more!” and did the sign for more.  I told him it was empty, so he went into the kitchen and over to the counter and tried to pull the (full) egg carton down, asking again for “eggy!” and then “fry”.  So, I got out the cast iron pan and he climbed up onto a chair to watch me fry his egg.  As soon as it was done, he hurried over to his little table and sat waiting.  He ate that entire egg with a fork…all by himself!  One morning he ate one fried egg, half a sausage, a handful of leftover potatoes fried in butter, half a carton of blueberries, a carton of raspberries, and half a piece of cheesecake…all before 11 am.

With all this eating, he has not gained an ounce since last month.  He’s still only 26 pounds, but he is definitely getting taller.  And his feet grew a whole size – he’s wearing size 7’s now (size 8 in his special order shoes for wide feet, lol).  He’s thinner around the middle and his legs and thighs have slimmed down, too.  Pants that were barely fitting him around Thanksgiving are looking a little loose on him now.  He’s fitting into 24 months again, after almost growing out of that size a month ago (although he wears 2T in pj’s).  It continues to amaze me how strong he is.  He got a wheelbarrow for Christmas and stood at the front of it – across from the handles – squatted down, grabbed it on both sides, grunted, and just hefted that sucker right into the air.  And it’s not light!

Isaac is in love with rainbows!  He loves pointing out rainbows in all of his books, and is learning his colors.  We walked around the neighborhood every evening to see the Christmas lights, and we’d spend a few minutes at each bush covered in those giant colored bulbs, naming all the different colors.

Aunt Rachel was here the other night and went outside just for a minute to put something in her car.  Isaac asked, “Daytul bye bye?”.  The other day, I asked Mimi to have Chris bring up some more milk for Isaac at bedtime and he looked at me and said, “Mimi, more milk, Daddy”.  He is really communicating with us now!  He can tell me when he bonks his head – “head” (or leg, foot, etc) plus the sign for hurt.  His favorite word is “stuck”.  He uses it when he doesn’t want to be somewhere (I’ve got him strapped into a high chair), when he can’t fit somewhere (like in between the ottoman and the couch), or when he actually gets stuck in something (under the wingback chair, fetching his toy).  It sounds like “guck” or “tuck”, and is hilarious to hear all day long :).  He’s learned to say boy and girl, and will point out who’s a boy and who’s a girl in his books, pictures hanging on the walls, etc.  He gets it right most times, although in an elevator full of people, he pointed at each woman in turn saying “girl” until he got to a man and we all waited…”girl!”.  That got a laugh ;).

He can identify himself in pictures now, and calls himself “Ack”.  He loves looking at pictures of Mommy, Daddy and “Ack” (usually followed by “baby”).  If you ask him “where’s Isaac?”, he’ll point to his chest and smile broadly.  He also loves to be asked “how old are you?” and holds up his pointer finger (actually, just yesterday he started saying “ONE” every time).  The best thing ever though, is that he started saying I love you.  Well, it sounds like “wub-oo”, but hey, it warms his Mama’s heart just the same :).

I’ve been keeping a running tally of all of Isaac’s words, and he knows well over 200 now!  These are words that are in regular use – at least weekly.  He comes up with new ones every day, constantly surprising me.  He also loves to echo every word that comes out of our mouths these days (time to be careful, haha).  It’s not uncommon to hear him repeat the last word of every sentence when you’re reading him a book, or just having a conversation with someone.  He loves mimicking grunts and groans too, which I’m ashamed to admit I did a lot of when I was sick recently.  It’s pretty humbling to hear every sound out of your mouth echoed by a tiny little voice!  I need to try and get a video of him saying some of his words, and his animal sounds…those are hilarious :).

This kid is so darn smart. He already recognizes a few of his numbers. His favorite counting book is Hippos Go Berserk by Sandra Boynton, and if you ask him to find the number 8, he’ll open the book and point to the right number! (The number 8 is definitely his favorite, so far). He loves saying the numbers on each page, and while so far he can only count to 2, I think he’s starting to get a grasp on his numbers. He’ll bring me the number 1 from his number puzzle and tell me “one!”.  He loves it when I count out the blueberries as he eats them, and when we swing him between us on a walk and count “one, two, three…whee!”. He absolutely loves to read books, and will sit quietly during car rides, flipping through the pages and occasionally calling out to tell me what he sees in the pictures.

I can’t believe how fast he’s growing.  He’ll be two before we know it!