Owen is eighteen months old!

   
     I apologize for not posting a monthly update on Owen last month, but with our recent doctor's appointment, I was reminded that I hadn't been keeping everyone updated with his growth and progress. So I promise I will try and be better about that. 
      Owen is doing great and we are so proud of how smart and cute and fun he is. He is learning new things every day and we are in constant amazement at how much he knows. 

At 18 months old, Owen is:

• 24.9 pounds, 30th percentile
• 32.7 inches long, 60th percentile
• Vaccinated for hepatitis A, rubella, and the flu.
• Doing amazing! Owen knows so many words and is speaking so well that the doctor told me that comparatively, he expects babies at their two-year-old appointments to know 50 words and string together two words to communicate. Owen already knows at least 50 words and can string together as many as four words to communicate. 

Eating:

• Owen eats three meals a day and an afternoon snack normally. 
• He eats basically whatever we eat. 
• He is not a big fan of most vegetables right now unless they are baked into whatever he is eating. 
• Owen loves pizza, grapes, turkey sausage, pears, and peanut butter. 
• Owen drinks whole milk with each main meal and water in between. He basically only drinks juice at his grandparents' house. It's the precursor to ice cream for breakfast, I'm sure.

Sleeping:

• Owen has moved to just one nap a day. He generally goes down just after lunch between 12:30 and 1 p.m and sleeps for between an hour and a half and two hours.
• Owen goes to bed at night at 7:30 p.m. 
• He wakes up at around 8 a.m.
• Owen has been waking up once during the night off and on for the past few weeks because of teething or being sick. 
• Owen's going to bed routine consists of a bath, pajamas and pain medication (when teething), reading a few books, and then snuggling and rocking in the chair with either mommy or daddy for a few minutes before putting him in his crib. We play white noise on his Sleep Sheep and play his Scout puppy dog's lullaby music for 10 minutes and he normally settles himself down and falls asleep rather quickly. He sleeps with a fleece blanket, of which we now have three. One is his favorite, but in the dark he can't tell the difference.

Things He Knows:

• Owen has a pretty large vocabulary. He says Mommy and Daddy. He knows tons of animals and animal noises. Most of his body parts. Tons of names of vehicles. Lots of foods. Toy names. Household items. 
• Owen has begun stringing together words to communicate. His most frequent phrases are: "Daddy at work," "Don't want that," and "Want my mommy."
• Owen frequently says "I sorry." Mommy must mess up a lot. :)
• Owen will say "Bless you" whenever someone sneezes.
• Owen can count to 10. He can even do it when we take turns filling in numbers for him.
• He still occasionally uses sign language, but knows the words for all his signs now and uses those more often. We have never had a problem with him using a sign instead of learning the word for the sign. I highly recommend doing sign language to help babies communicate before they start speaking.
• He can say "Love you" which rocks.
• Tim has taught him an assortment of very important phrases: "Go Dawgs," "Sic em! Woof woof woof" "Fumble," and "Tackle." 
• We have started trying to teach Owen his shapes and colors. So far, he can recognize a circle. 
• Owen is definitely in the parroting stage of learning language and will copy basically  every thing we say, particularly if we say it emphatically.
• Owen still high fives a good amount and now says "Yeah" afterwards.

Other Things I Want to Remember:

• Owen is wearing size 18 month and starting to wear size 18-24 months clothing. Although he is supposedly above the 50th percentile in length, most of his pants are too long and I have to roll them up. 
• Owen wears size 5.5 and size 6 shoes, depending on the brand. 
• I am transitioning Owen to size 4 diapers once we've run out of size 3's. 
• Owen has 12 teeth in now (four in front on top and bottom and two top molars and two bottom molars) with three canine teeth coming in currently. 
• Owen loves when we read to him and looking at books by himself. His favorite books are anything with trucks or animals. He really loves "Trucks Go," "The Going to Bed Book," and "Fox in Socks." He can even finish some of the sentences of certain books when I'm reading to him. 
• Owen's favorite songs are "Baa Baa Black Sheep" and "Row Row Row Your Boat."
• Owen loves to watch Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, which we allow him to watch about once or twice a week. He knows most of the characters' names and seems to prefer Mickey and Goofy. 
• Owen loves playing with trucks, balls, his shapes sorter, and his music table. And pretty much anything that is not a toy, including plastic kitchenware, Tim's socks, hair bands, the printer, and the tv remote (or to him the me-mote). 
• Owen enjoys playing outside and frequently asks to "Go owside?" While outside, he plays on his slide, picks flowers in the yard, and climbs up and down the stair off our front porch over and over. 
• Owen has started to display some separation anxiety. We are not entirely sure when he will decide to freak out when we leave him and when he will do fine with us leaving him. 
• Owen is a major animal lover, particularly dogs and cats. He talks all the time about all the ones he knows, like my parent's cat Pumpkin and Katie and David's dogs Lexi and Cooper. 
• Owen is still a major music lover and will dance anytime he hears music. His dance moves of choice at the moment are "the grape stomp" and "spin in circles." 
• Owen loves playing with the children's apps on either my Nook or Tim's Nexus. 
• Owen loves to put our shoes on now and stands in them like he's so proud of himself.