My 15 Month Old

I'm becoming a bit impatient for Henry to talk. In a few weeks he will be 16 months old and I feel like he should be talking more. The last week I've really been trying to work with him, sounding out words and pointing out just about everything during our day together. The most frustrating part is that I know he can talk, I just think he doesn't feel the need to.

We've heard him say mom and dad many times. He says 'I love you', 'get it' and 'thank you' on occasion but not very often. We've heard him say yeah, car, ball, dog, fish, and hello... but only every now and then. We taught him to roar for Halloween and make engine sounds when he's playing with his cars. His newest thing is 'gobble, gobble, gobble' which I think is the cutest thing ever. But again, he only says things when he wants to - he prefers just to point or drag you to what he wants.

I know that I'm probably overreacting and being impatient with him, but he's excelled so well up to this point and continues to excel in other areas that I feel like he should excel with this as well. He's such a good little boy, he cleans up after himself and understands and reacts to everything we say to him these days. When we come in from outside, he sits down, takes his shoes off and puts them into the bucket by the door. When he's done playing with his cars all I have to say is 'put your cars away' and he puts them, one by one, back into his box. He undresses himself and attempts to dress himself and if you mention a specific toy, he will go looking for it until he finds it. (We learned our lesson with that. If the toy is in the toy-box, he WILL dump the entire thing to attempt to find it.) He has learned to walk up and down steps if he is given a hand or a railing to hold on to. He doesn't fight his bedtime or nap time and he's really a very independent boy.

We are fighting with him about certain things though. He climbs everything and by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. He will pull himself up onto the counter-tops if you're not watching him - and same for the kitchen table. He can be up a flight of stairs in two-second flat and if you don't get up right as he wakes up in the morning, he can climb right out of his crib. He refuses to drink from a sippy cup and while he will still use cups with straws, he would really prefer a regular cup which usually results in a mess. But so do the cups with straws as his new favorite thing to do is to suck milk into his mouth and then spit it out. The dogs just love that. We've done all the child-proofing that is humanly possible and he still manages to get into stuff. Today he managed to bypass the safety-lock on one of my kitchen drawers and he dumped an entire bag of brown sugar all over the floor. That was fun.

Still, I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love his kisses which have went from open-mouthed to puckered lips. And when you pick him up, he has taken to squeezing you around the neck for a gentle hug. It's just about the sweetest thing ever. Sadly, he doesn't like sitting on our laps anymore though. He would rather sit next to you, but he still leans close against you so that you can cuddle him close. In the car we have long conversations of jibber jabbers that I just don't understand at all, but it makes me smile.

Overall, I think I have a perfect little thing and I hope that he will just continue to grow and learn and play just like he is now.