18 Months Old

Will turned 18-months-old on September 4th.

Will and Tiger - 18 months old

He is getting so big and is such a little boy now. He is growing up so fast and is learning something new every single day. It is hard for Clay and me to keep up with him. He amazes us all the time with things he knows. He will do something and Clay and I will just look at each other like “where did he learn that.”

He does so many sweet things right now. One of my favorites is he will yell “Mommy” and I will yell back “Will”, and we will keep doing it until we find each other and then he just starts laughing. It is so fun. Another sweet thing he does is he does the motions for “I love you”. We will say “I” and he will point to his eyes. We say “love” and he crosses his arms across his chest. Then we say “you” and he will point with both hands at us. It makes me melt.

Sometimes he does some not so sweet things but like I have said before, those times are few and far between. Mostly he gets an attitude if he is tired or doesn’t feel well. He definitely likes to get his way but we are working hard for him to understand he can’t always do and have what he wants. We have started doing time out and that seems to really work for him. The time out spot is in his room on the floor underneath his window. The couple of times we have had to put him in time out, he has done exactly what we have asked of him. We tell him has to sit there until he can stop crying and get a better attitude. He will actually sit there until he is over being upset and then he will come find one of us and we talk about what happened. This has worked out really well and curbed some bad behaviors like throwing toys. Hopefully he will continue to be good and he won’t have to spend too much time in time out.

His eating is still a source of stress for me. He now refuses to eat any baby food and generally all he wants is milk. We always offer him what we are eating but most of the time he doesn’t eat it. He has started eating the lunch that his daycare provides and so we are hoping that seeing the other children eating will prompt him to do the same. The doctor says his weight is fine and that we just need to continue to offer him healthy options. He loves to have snacks so we are trying to make those snacks as healthy as possible. Other parents have told me about their children’s eating issues so I don’t think Will is doing anything unusual for his age. We will just continue to offer him table food and hopefully one day he will enjoy eating it. The eating has really been our biggest struggle.

More of what he is up to:

-He is saying so many words now and some phrases. There are too many to list but a few of his favorite words are: John, shoes, ball, no, and milk. We hear these constantly. His favorite phrase right now is “want snack.”
-He knows all the hand motions to the “Isty Bitsy Spider” and “Patty Cake”. It really is the cutest thing ever.
-He says “CHEESE” any time he sees a camera and wants to see the picture after you have taken it.
-He loves to play and loves being outside.
-From what I can tell, he does really well at school and loves to have other kids around. He also does well in the nursery at church. He cries sometimes when we drop him off, but all his teachers have assured us that it only last a few minutes.
-He is wearing mostly 18 month clothes (some 12 month and some 24 month depending on the brand).
-He wears a size 5 extra wide shoe and a size 4 diaper.

We took Will for his 18-month well visit yesterday. Dr. R said he was doing well and he didn’t have any concerns about his health or development. Will did have to get 3 shots. He started crying as soon as the nurse came in and Clay and I had to hold him down. It broke my heart. Other than that it was a good visit. Dr. R is always very encouraging and always answers our questions honestly.

Here are Will’s stats from our visit:

Weight: 25 pounds, 14 ounces (50th percentile)

Height: 32 inches even (between the 25th and 50th percentile)

Head Circumference: 19 ½ inches (90th percentile)

At the end of our Will and Tiger photo shot, Will thought his Tiger needed something to drink so he gave the Tiger some milk!

To see more pictures of Will and Tiger, go HERE.