Tyler: 23 Months

April 24-May 23, 2012 (22 to 23 months old)

What's new with Tyler?

• As you can see in the 1st photo above, he finally poses for the camera and lets me take his picture!  He loves going through all the photos/videos of him on my iphone and I believe he finally made the connection that when I take his picture, it will show up in the iphone photo album.  What really helped make it click was I took his picture and then immediately showed him the result.  He then wanted to pose and run to see it.  What a relief to not have him avoid the camera!
• As you can see in the 2nd photo above, his finger and nose have become BFFs.  I swear he has that finger up his nose every time I turn around.  He doesn't really pick it, he just likes sticking his finger up there and leaving it there.  When he's done with one side, he moves to the other.
• He's starting to climb things like ladders and climbing walls with me behind him guiding him.  The entire time I'm pleading for it not to teach him how to climb out of his crib.
• He can now jump.  For the last few months he's been jumping but would only get 1 foot off the ground.  One day I just said, can you get both feet off the ground?  He tried and got it on the first try and hasn't stopped since.  He's so proud of his ability to jump and loves to get "wahoo's" from them.  He can now jump on a trampoline as well.
• He loves spinning around and around, say "dizzzzzzy" and fall over.
• We took him to the pool and found that he's just as dangerous as last summer.  He will walk right off the edge and into the pool with no concern.  Once in the water he's really trying to swim.  He kicks his legs but hasn't figured out how to paddle his arms.  A few times he was like let go of me, I can swim.  Time for swim lessons.
• In his gymnastics class, I've always had to physically guide him through all his stretches, but now he's starting to do them on his own.  He reaches for the sky, touches his toes, etc.  It's so cute to watch him follow along on his own.
• He's starting to act out movements to children's songs.  His favorite is Wheels On The Bus.
• He's starting to transition from parallel play to associative play with his playmates.  His favorite is playing chase.
• This kiddo is exceptional when it comes to sharing.  He's never used the word "mine".  I don't ever see him take things from other kids.  When another child takes something from him, most of the time he just lets them.  When the parent makes their child give the toy back and the child throws a complete wing ding, he just looks at them like dude, what is your problem?
• He's finally taking normal size bites of food.  Every since he learned how to use utensils he has taken these enormous bites that would fill his entire mouth with the remaining running down his face.  I started taking a huge bite and said big bite, then I would take a normal bite and say small bite.  We now have an eating tradition.  He scoops up a huge bite, says beeeeg bite, shakes off the spoon, says small bite and takes a bite.  He repeats this for every bite.
• He started counting.  The first thing he counted was my boobs.  One milk, Two milks!  He counts in patterns like 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 or in sets of three like 8, 9, 10.
• He knows his colors:  red, orange, yellow, green (geen), blue (boo), purple, pink, black and white.  I was very excited for this as 2 months ago every color was yellow and I was slightly concerned he was color blind.  What's funny is that 4 of my friends who have a child around Tyler's age also called every color yellow.
• He's either starting to read or has a really good memory.  He reads the bindings of his books/videos, says the title and then pulls them off the shelf.

Language:

New signs:

• Penguin
• Monkey
• Frog
• Pig
• Squirrel
• Blanket
• Socks
• Diaper
• Dirty
• Stars
• Home
• Wait

Misc:

• Our sweet little guy has started throwing F bombs!  Ok, not exactly, but let's just say that frog does not come out sounding like frog!  Anytime he sees a frog, he doesn't just say frog, he yells FROG!  I'll never forget this moment, we walked into a store, he walked up to 3 little old ladies who were admiring him, he pointed to a frog and said FROG, FROG, FROG!!!  The horror on their faces!  All I could do is run out of there laughing hysterically!
• He started using the word too.  Mama play cars, Dada play cars too.
• He gets me and you mixed up.  He says "chase me mama" when he wants to chase me.  A toddler will make you realize how difficult it must be to learn our language.
• He's really mimicking us and repeats almost everything we say.  He even mimics the noises we make.  We couldn't figure out why he was making this loud moaning noise every time we picked him, then realized it's because we grunt when picking him up as he's getting heavy.
• He said his last name for the first time and OMG was it the cutest thing ever!

Video:  Tyler says his name

Cars (cars gets it's own section, that's how big the obsession is):

• They are not just cars and trucks, he calls them by type; jeep, suv, van, bus, pickup truck, dump truck, ambulance, police car, fire truck, UPS truck, mail truck, digger, excavator, backhoe, tractor, etc.  I know all boys love cars, but this little boy takes it to a whole nutha level.  
• He knows which car belongs to each family member and each nanny.  When he sees a car pull up, he runs to the window and exclaims "Mimi's car!" or whoever's car it is.  But he takes this to a whole nutha level as well.  He recognizes their cars outside of our home.  We were in Gatlinburg this month on a mini vacation with family.  3 days into our vacation, my MIL joined us.  She met us at a restaurant and Tyler had no idea she was joining us.  We were walking through the parking lot and Tyler starts pointing and exclaiming "Mom-Mom-Mom's car!!!".  Sure enough, there was her car an aisle over.
• He doesn't just play with cars like other little boys, he studies them.  He slowly rolls them across a table at eye level and studies their every movement and every detail.  Mechanical engineer some day?
• He can't go anywhere without his cars.  If we go bye bye, he fills up his diaper bag with cars.  If we go upstairs to bed, he fills up my arms with cars to take up there.  If I tell him it's time to change his diaper, he immediately scoops up as many cars as he can, because you know 30 seconds without them would be torture.  But it's so cute, he loads them up in the crooks of his elbows, then loads more between his arms and chest and then loads up as many as his little fists will hold.

Eating:

We've been having a hard time getting him to eat what we want him to eat.  I decided it's time to get a little tougher on him and come to the realization that he's not going to let himself starve.

It was dinner time, I put him in his highchair and put a plate of veggies in front of him.  It was veggies that he liked, but he insisted on cottage cheese.  I told him he could have some after he ate his veggies.  He pushed the veggies away and kept asking for cottage cheese.  I repeated that he could have some after his veggies.  He said all done.  I asked if he was sure he was all done and asked if he was ok with going hungry.  He said yes, so I let him out of his highchair and told him to go play.  He got upset and tried to climb back into his highchair.  I helped him up and he ate all his veggies.  Seriously???  I can't believe it worked.

Sleep:

I cannot believe how easy it has become to put him to bed.  When he's tired, he reaches for his crib and says bed or night night.  One night I sat him down while I fixed his bedding and he was so desperate to get back to sleep that he tried to climb in his crib, not out, IN!

We've found a trick that works wonders for those middle of the night wakings.  I simply send Kerry (or anyone besides me) up there and within minutes or less he's reaching for his crib and saying bed, bed.  It's like if he can't have mama, then just put him back to bed.

He's never really been one to use anything for a security blanket, unless you count my boobs.  Well he all of a sudden decided he needed one.  It's not exactly a blanket, but a sippy cup.  He'll say "doot, doot" and we'll hand him his sippy and then he says "doot, night, night" and we put him to bed.  He rolls over and cuddles with his doot.

Teeth:

We're making more progress on the teeth brushing saga and wanted to share something I tried that helped.  Tyler likes to suck on the toothbrush and brush his tongue.  We had the hardest time getting his actual teeth brushed.  One day I got out my toothbrush and brushed my teeth while facing him.  I kept saying scrubba, scrubba, do you hear that?  Then I said, can you do that?  When he would make the noise by brushing his teeth, I would get all excited and say, I hear it, Daddy do you hear it?  Daddy would say, I hear it too, can you do it some more?

How to get your child to eat spinach:

We used to tear up spinach and put it in Tyler's scrambled eggs that he eats every morning.  He's not so keen on it anymore.  Actually he's refusing more and more vegetables as he gets older.  I'm finding myself having to get more and more creative if I want to get any veggies in him.  Green doot (drink) has saved the day!

Throw the following into a blender and you have yourself an amazingly tasty juice smoothie that tastes just like apple juice.  You would never know there was spinach in it.

3 handfuls of Organic Spinach
1 leaf of Organic Kale (stem removed)
1 cup Organic Apple Juice
1 cup Water
1 Organic Granny Smith Apple
1 Banana
1 cup Ice

This makes enough to serve 3-4.

I normally don't give Tyler juice, but this is so power packed with nutrients that the pros outweigh the cons.

Tyler-isms:

• One day Tyler walked into my office and said fa-knee (funny) and gave out a big belly laugh over and over again.  Soon we were both belly laughing and neither of us knew why.
• I have a huge red stainless steel water bottle that I drink from all day every day.  It's looks like a fire extinguisher.  Tyler walked up to me, pointed to it and said fire doot (drink) and then started making siren sounds. 
• One day Tyler ripped a big one and I said, what was that??? and he replied, a beeeeg fart!.

This month in photos:

I gave him a shopping cart and he grabbed 4 cottage cheeses!

This kid is obsessed with cottage cheese!

A photo from the nanny... I love the high five at the end!

Still going...

Tyler's 1st airshow

Tyler and Matilda after playing in the pool

Chillin' with Homey

This kid is sooo funny!

He actually smiled for the camera!

He loves flowers, he stopped and smelled every single pot.

Who is this child that is falling asleep everywhere???