21 Months Old

Sorry, Nathan, for a boring entry to document you being 21 months old.  Just making sure I make some sort of entry so I don't forget anything!

New words this month:
This (Dis)
Please (Piece)
Ice
Mouth (Mouf)
Donkey (Dan-ee)
Eyes
Thanks (Tas)
Candy (Tan-ee)
Bees
Boo (Cow)
Ugh (Up)
Doggie
Teddy
Yes
Baby

In the middle of June I stopped giving Nathan Restoralax in his bottle, and he's been totally fine without it.  Then, when we went camping at the end of June, I forgot to give him his bottle one night (June 29) and he didn't even realize it.  Thinking that it was then prime-time to drop his bottle, I didn't give him another bottle.  He asked for it once at camping and then the first night back at home, but didn't care when I gave him a sippy cup of water instead.  So nice!

Nathan loves playing hockey.  As soon as he goes outside with Jon after dinner, he right away grabs a hockey stick and practices shooting a hockey ball into the net.  Jon loves it!

Once a week or so, Nathan wakes up in the middle of the night screaming, like he's been tortured.  It's so sad.  I get out of bed and run to his room as quick as I can, so that he doesn't wake up Matthew or Kayla.  He's always standing in his crib when I get there, and then I sit with him in the rocking chair for one minute while he cuddles against me, holding his blanket.  I then ask him if he's ready to go back to his crib and he always says, "Yes."  I lay him back in his crib and he falls fast asleep.  It's so strange.  He probably would be okay if I didn't take him out at all, but the way he cuddles against me is so nice...and he's only young once.

Nathan can be a bit of a bully to those around him.  When he's in his 'bully' mood he definitely likes to pick on Matthew (seldom Kayla) because he knows Matthew will just cry.  He likes to push other kids' buttons, that's for sure.

Nathan loves it when he gets to see his Vander Ende cousins - he usually runs to my parents' back door when he hears them coming and gets so excited when they come in the house.  He's definitely the most social of my kids.

He can be such a great kid, but he can also have attitude.  He often giggles when getting put into time out, and tries to run out of it.  When he gets moved to his crib for time-out instead then he realizes that I mean business.

He loves picking up Lacey's (my parents' dog) poo.  As soon as we step into my parents' backyard he runs for the poo bucket and shovel and walks to the edge of the yard where she always goes and calls out when he finds a pile of poo to pick up.  If no one comes quick enough, then he starts shoveling it up himself.  Once it's all cleaned up, he has to be the one to carry the bucket and shovel back.  It's really quite cute.

Nathan also like to help in my parents' garden, picking blueberries, tomatoes, and beans.  He's really good at following instructions and knowing which produce is ripe enough to be picked.

Nathan is still very injury-prone.  He often trips over his own toes, scraping up his knees.  This past weekend, he somehow stumbled trying to climb over the chicken-wire fence into my parents' vegetable garden and chipped one of his front teeth on one of the poles holding the fence in place.  He's missing about 1/5 of the tooth.  I called the dentist on Monday to see if Nathan needed to go in, but they said so long as he's not bothered by it (with hot/cold food) and so long as it isn't discolouring then there's no need to bring him in.  Poor kid will just have a chipped tooth for the next four to five years.

Nathan LOVES swimming.  Every time we go to a pool he spends the entire time jumping in - and we don't even catch him, he goes completely underwater.

Nathan also loves jumping on the trampoline and he loves riding his balance bike.

He still has a nap each afternoon.  He typically wakes up himself after about an hour, but if he's sleeping longer then I wake him up after one and a half hours.  When he naps at my parents', he used to nap in a playpen but has gradually transitioned himself to sleeping on a bed.  I still try to convince him to sleep in the playpen, but if he's not changing his mind then he's allowed to sleep on the bed in the room.

Nathan learned how to do a somersault this month!  He started himself by putting his head on the floor, so all we had to do was teach him to move his feet closer to his head and jump.  It only took a few minutes and he had it all figured out.