Isaac 21-Month Update

My Justin Bieber Baby at 18 months

There is so much about Isaac at this age that I want to capture in a bottle forever. Brent and I have loved being his parents. He is just so adorable and fun-- and this age especially has revealed a lot of his personality and sense of humor.

He is a good talker, I would say, particularly for a boy his age. I have no idea what his vocabulary is at right now, but he definitely knows more than 100 words. He is comfortable with 2-3 word phrases and is very good at making a wide range of consonant combinations. Some examples are "I got it!", "I see you!", "I fall," "More ______," "Dada work?", "Apple Juice," and "See Bandit?" (when we are doing FaceTime with my parents).

And some of the words he uses all the time are, "See?" (meaning pick me up, I want to see that), "Hold" (pick me up and hold me), "Side!" (Outside or I want to go outside.), "Hun-gy" (hungry), "Dump" (this could mean I'm about to dump my food on the floor or he will also say it while playing quite a bit), and "car", "truck", and "firetruck" are up there with the words that he says most often every day. 

Also, just yesterday, he was "flying" around the house pretending to be an airplane and kept saying, "Crash landing!" and would fall down. There is usually a pause between his words though, so it sounded like " Crash . . . land-ing!" I had no idea he knew how to say that. It was so cute! 

Isaac loves his gummy vitamins and asks for them every day. We have been giving him Calcium gummies for a while to supplement his diary-free diet, but recently I started giving him multi-vitamin gummies as well. When I first introduced the Calcium gummies, I gave them to him right after his nap with his snack. When he woke up from his nap, I would say, "Do you want your snack?" And so, he thought the vitamins were called "snack"-- because I guess he looked forward to them much more than his crackers or fruit.  

So every day he yells, " 'NACK?! 'NACK?!" until I respond and ask him if he would like his vitamin. But recently, when we started giving him the new vitamins, on his own, he noticed the different colored bottles of the two types of vitamins (blue and red). Now he says, "BUE 'NACK?! BUE 'NACK?!" And after he's had that, he says, "RED 'NACK?!" Haha! He is so funny! 

He has also started singing the ABCs --- or trying to. His different versions include, "A, B, double-awch, E." and "A, B, C, Double-P, Double-P, Double-P" He really likes doubling his letters. LOL

And he has a word he made up: dungle-pop. We think it might be a mutation of Jungle Book. But in any case, he uses it in place of something he doesn't know the name of. The other day an apartment manager knocked on the door, and when she walked away, he said loudly, "Bye, Dungle-pop!" Lol. I have to admit, felt just a tad embarrassed. And when Brent was playing a new game with him, swinging him in the air, he said, "More dungle-pop!" until Brent told him he could say, "More swing." Then, he started saying, "More swing."

Isaac is extremely observant. He will sit and look at each page of a book for a long time. And he notices small details in the pictures of his books that I have never noticed-- even after reading them to him dozens of times. He also has sharp ears-- especially for trucks, planes, and helicopters. If he hears and airplane fly over our house (we're not close to any airport, so they are not loud at all), he will stop what he's doing and look at the ceiling with a surprised face and say, "airplane?" 

He also has ears for the garbage truck. I now know our pickup schedule-- every Mon, Wed, and Friday morning. And we are at the bedroom window as soon as we hear it coming. When he first started watching it about three months ago, he would cry as it drove away, but now he's used to the idea that it will leave and come back again soon. :-)

One of his favorite activities is playing with clean laundry that is often piled on top of the armchair in my bedroom. He will seriously play independently for up to 45 minutes dragging laundry around. It's weird, but I don't mind at all. He also loves to play with random objects which he uses as tools to bang on walls or try to "fix" things. These objects include an old blush brush that I set aside for him to use, un-sharpened pencils, paint brushes, and really anything that is like a stick. He also loves playing with my OXO salad spinner and, of course, my iPhone, if he can get his hands on it. (I don't have any games on it for him, but he just likes to put in wrong passwords until my phone is disabled for 15 minutes.)

As far as conventional toys go, he likes his dump truck and firetruck the best. He also likes a small beanie baby teddy bear and his Teddy which he takes to bed at night. The rest of his toys-- duplos, train set, etc.-- he mostly likes to just dump on the ground and then that is the end of it. He will build towers for about 5-10 minutes, but nothing lasting yet. He much prefers for you to build something for him to destroy. Because of this we sing (to the tune of Bob the Builder), "Isaac the Destroyer! He can wreck it! Isaac the Destroyer! Yes, he can!" 

Here are some pictures of this cute kid over the last few months: 

With more of the Bieber look going on . . . (18 months)

Playing with Sydney --who he called "See-see" until just recently (20 months old)

Watching the gardeners: his favorite Monday morning activity (20 months)

Ready for Church! This boy loves Nursery! (20 months)

My Sweet 14-Month-Old

My friend, Olya, took these adorable pictures of Isaac. Isn't he a cutie? My favorites are the last two. But these raccoon ones melt my heart as well. :-) Actually, let's be honest: I love them all! 

I love this age! I think I've felt that way about every age, but it just keeps getting more fun. Isaac loves to read, and he will bring books to me throughout the day. His new thing is that he hands me a book and then runs to the couch because he knows that's where we sit to read. I love it when he sits on my lap and rests his head against my chest. It's our time to relax.

Isaac is a really good eater, but drinking has been a challenge for us. He is officially weaned, and really, it was the smoothest transition ever. I was the one that had been pushing nursing for the last 3 months because I was worried about his liquid intake and diet (due to his allergies). But my milk dried up, and nursing became a futile cause. So, we just stopped, and he hasn't even cared. Talk about an easy transition.

But getting him to drink enough has not been easy. I put sippy cups around the house, but if it were up to him, he would drink less than 8 oz a day. So, I offer, offer, offer. If I offer a lot and spoon feed him a bowl of cereal and oat milk, he can get around 20 oz down-- but that is still 4 oz shy of what is supposedly the absolute minimum he's supposed to be drinking. ACK! Any suggestions there? We did buy a straw cup, but I'm still not sure if he prefers that. We've tried Nesquick in the oat milk. I even blended up fresh strawberries to make a smoothie-like drink, and he wouldn't drink that. So the only things he drinks are watered-down juice and water. I'm hoping this is just a phase and that he will start liking chocolate oat milk. What kid doesn't like chocolate milk?

His new skills include walking backwards (he does it when he's trying to see what's on top of the counter), spinning in circles, crawling up the stairs (I let him climb all the staircases in our complex as we s-l-o-w-l-y make our way to the mail box), eating with a fork, and saying a few words! He is not a big talker and rarely says these words, but he has said all of them multiple times on his own:

dada
ba (ball)
teh-teh (Teddy)
buh (book)
buh-buh (bubble)
nuh-nuh (no no)
puh-puh (poke poke) -- This is what we tell him to do when he's eating with a fork.
ickle ickle (tickle)

The thing he says the most is "DUH!" Which is pretty much the equivalent of "THAT!" He points and says "duh!" to whatever he wants. It's cute, but I'm excited for him to become more verbal.

Life with a one-year-old is very sweet.