18 months

Daniel is a year and a half old. I often think he's older than that, maybe because he's so tall. At his 18mo well visit, he was 34in and 26 lbs. Or so. Neither measurement was all that exact because Daniel was not so interested in being measured :)

Daniel's phrase of the month is: "Oh no!" Dave read him a story that said "Oh no!" several times and Daniel picked right up on it, even imitating Dave's inflection. It was so cute to hear him emphatically saying, "Oh no!" in his sweet little baby voice. We could tell at first that he didn't quite understand what it meant. We laughed when he said it randomly and so it became the-words-that-make-mom-and-dad-laugh. He knew uh-oh, so I started saying oh no in place of uh-oh and he got the meaning pretty quickly. Other new words include: broom, bubble, beh-bah (belly button), choo-choo, boom, eye and pop. He's been saying a lot of new words but I don't always remember long enough to write them down. He also makes a lot of sound effects, making me realize how many silly sounds and sound effects I make throughout the day. Since I started writing this (almost 2 weeks ago!) he's added sharp, hop, green, blue and shoe. He's also started signing light, again and more and shakes his head "no."

Daniel loves to run and to be chased around the house. He also loves climbing on the couch and then jumping off into or arms or jumping from one couch to the other. He's turning into quite the climber and I'm trying to give him enough places where he can climb.

Daniel has a pretty good memory and knows where things are. One day I went to change his diaper and the wipe solution bottle wasn't on the shelf. I asked Daniel where it was (he had been playing with one of them earlier) and he pointed behind the changing table. Sure enough, both the bottle I knew he was playing with and the one I was looking for were under the changing table. I can usually ask him where he put something and he'll run off to get it and bring it back.

Daniel has figured out how to pull the trigger on the spray bottle. At first he could only push it when he was pointing the bottle towards him. He alternately shot water over his shoulder and into his face, squealing and laughing as he did.

Daniel pulled the vacuum out of the closet the other night, unwound the cord and brought it over to me to plug in for him. I plugged it in, finished a couple things and then we vacuumed. I went to unplug the vacuum when we were done and it was plugged in to a totally different outlet than I had plugged it into! I don't think the cat switched it, so it must have been Daniel!

One of our favorite games this month has been the "run to mama" game. I sit on the floor with my arms out and say, "Run to mama!" Daniel comes running to me and gives me a big bear hug. Then he'll run giggling to the other room or to dad, stop a a minute, then run back to me again for another hug.