Are you ready for some football?

Apparently, we are. Tyler has 2 new jerseys to wear this football season. A new Virginia Tech jersey from Uncle Eddie, and a new Tony Romo jersey from Gramme & Granddad Snead. It's really easy to pick his clothes out on the weekends now. Just have to know who's playing when.

And I've become a bit obsessed with Tyler's curls lately. I can't seem to take enough pictures of them! I guess I want to enjoy them for as long as we can. We know that the "first haircut" has to come....one day. But for now, we're keeping his sweet, blonde curls - until someone mistakes him for a girl. Then all bets are off!

Tyler has really taken a liking to stickers lately, and that's been helpful in establishing a reward system. We give him stickers when he's being good (i.e. this morning when we had to take him to LabCorp), and hope to be able to use stickers as a reward for potty training. Speaking of potty training, no, we are nowhere near ready for that yet, but we did go ahead and invest in a potty for Tyler. And he'll sit on it (while saying "sit, sit") but that's about. That's OK, we just want him to know that it's there for him, and to explore and get used to it.

We've got a busy end of the month around here. Travis and I leave for Las Vegas to meet up with some friends on the 26th. We get back on the 30th, and Tyler will be staying with Gramme & Granddad Snead for that time. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, we weren't able to have more than one "test night" at their house, so here's hoping that we all do well! Trav has been away from Tyler when he travels on business, but this will be my first big outing without him. And while I'm nervous about that, I'm also excited to have some "play time" for Travis & I. So keep your fingers crossed for us all!!!

18 months old - and a language explosion!

No need to check the calendar behind me, it’s true. Tyler is really 18 months old! It’s so hard to believe how quickly time has passed since he’s been here. I thought back to this time last year, and all of the things that he was doing then – sitting up unassisted, just starting to use (or play with) a sippy cup, eating his first foods. And now look at him. We’ve got a certified walking, talking, climbing toddler. (And I’ll go ahead and cut you off now – no, that does not mean it’s time for us to have another one, but thanks anyway.) We took him to get professional pictures done, something that we hadn’t done since his birthday. What a big boy he’s becoming, right before our eyes. And, if we do say so ourselves, a very handsome boy at that.

According to every parenting book out there (which I don’t have time to read anymore), 18 months is a pretty big age. Lots of things start to happen. Toddlers generally start testing more limits (yep), talking more (absolutely), changing the way that they play to use more of their imagination (you betcha), and so on. The biggest development that we’ve noticed is the change in Tyler’s vocabulary. I swear he says a new word (or 2!) a day. Just yesterday, we were at the pediatrician’s office for his well visit (stats later) and he looked at Travis and pointed and said “book”. I asked when he started saying that because I had never heard it. Travis said it just happened a night or so ago during storytime. See? We can’t keep up with the new words! Some favorites: “No-no, Gracie. Not nice.” (I should add that Gracie is usually not doing anything wrong. He just follows her around the house wagging his finger at her, saying this.) “more” (followed by “milk” or “snack” usually), “shoes” (the kid loves shoes), “blocks”, “outside” which is followed by “hat” since he knows that he has to wear a hat to go outside. There’s a ton more, but I won’t bore you (further) with a comprehensive list. We get a couple of strings of words from time to time (see the Gracie comment above) and we heard “I got shoes” once. It’s so nice to be able to really communicate with him now though! We have fewer frustrations when it comes to what he wants. Notice I said fewer and not “no frustrations”. The doctor said to be prepared for even more words to come at a rapid pace as he nears his 2nd birthday.

And speaking of the doctor, all is well. Tyler weighs 26 lbs. 12 oz. (60th percentile), is 33.5 inches tall (80th percentile), and still has a whopper of a head, but that’s ok. Developmentally, he looks great and is doing all of the things (and more!) that a “normal” 18 month old should be doing. He’s even doing many of the things that she said that he should be doing at 24 months (i.e. pointing out body parts). At 18 months, the doctors have the parents complete a checklist which would potentially point out warning signs of autism. Thankfully, there are no warning signs where Tyler is concerned, not that we ever thought there would be. We do have to go for some bloodwork soon so that they can rule out anemia. Tyler’s past couple of finger pricks in the office have come back slightly lower than normal for his iron levels, so they want to figure out just how low his iron levels are and what might be causing it. So we’ll have that done next week sometime and once they get the results, we’ll talk to the doctor again and see what, if anything, needs to happen. It may be something like an iron supplement, or it may be nothing at all. We’ll just wait and see. But overall, it was another great appointment, and we don’t go back until he’s 2!