17 Months.

Well, jeez. Can you believe it? Next month Ben will be a year and a half old. Time is flllllllllllying by. I'm excited for his well baby visit next month, I want to see how much he's grown!

Not really a whole lot different than last month. He's picking up more and more words. We bought him one of those "first words" books and he's gotten fairly good at pointing to the correct picture when I ask him where something is.

Some things different are his moods. My sweet happy boy is being replaced more and more by this whiney, tantrum-y, dare-I-say-it: brat. In retrospect, these moments really aren't that often, but when they're happening, it tends to feel like they're happening ALL. THE. TIME. He's also started to get a bit aggressive, trying out hitting & biting. Good times.

Sleep continues to be gross. Naps have started to get interrupted for whatever reason (I'm sure it's teething) and I find myself recently having to go in at least once a nap to tell him it's still nap time and to go back to sleep. Night time he seems to enjoy waking up at around 2:00ish to jabber. For hours. No amount of soothing, cuddling, firm "it's still night-night time" reminders seems to encourage him to go back to sleep any faster. So in defense of this, I've started turning the monitor almost all the way down. Soft enough that my fan drowns out the jabbering, but still on so that if he cries or is in distress, I can hear him and go see what's up (like the time his foot was stuck through the crib slats).

I'm thinking the bink may have to go sooner than 2 years, as I said in my last post. I'm pretty sure this is the reason for most of the night wakings. He wakes up, realizes he doesn't have it and can't go back to sleep. He's completely off it during the day and has no problems either giving it to me to put away after nap or putting it on the shelf himself. So next we get the glorious task of taking it away for sleeps. I think we'll wait til after Nick graduates for that one.

Meal times are also becoming an adventure. Some days he'll eat great, loving everything I give him and eating it all. Other days, he refuses to eat, spits it out and/or throws it on the floor. I never know what I'm going to get at meal time. A dinner he devoured two weeks ago is nasty the next time he has it. Everything I read says this is fairly age appropriate, but annoying nonetheless. :)

I think that's it. Really, nothing too new since last month. I'm sure June 18th will be here before I know it!