Since there are so many changes at this stage, so many milestones reached, I thought I'd recap what Gavin can do and who he is at 18 months:
*Gavin can communicate what he wants...if he doesn't know the word, he makes his request clear by pointing or showing us what it is he wants. If we get it wrong, he lets us know that is not what he requested and will not give up until it is corrected.
*He still eats just about everything although very picky about meat-mostly the texture. Gavin will NEVER turn down raisins or dried cranberries. It is the one thing that it's hard for him to share, he just loves them too much. Milk is still the preferred drink at any time although now that grandma has introduced him to "Elmo juice" and "Big Bird juice" or "Cookie juice"- do you see the trend?- now Gavin likes juice. I was told that my mom mentioned something along the lines of "Stephanie is going to kill me" because she introduced Gavin to juice. I'm not upset, I'm happy because that means he can get some of his daily fruit servings from the juice...as long as it's organic and low in sugar I'm ok with it. :)
*Gavin speaks quite a bit, single words mostly although he does say some phrases with two words (e.g. lay-down, all done/gone, "vamonos afuera" Spanish for let's go outside)
*Names all of his toy characters (Disney, Super Why?, Sesame Street, AND Lando from Star Wars- Nick is very proud!)
*Gavin loves books. He will choose a book and go sit on someone's lap and pretty much force them to read the book to him. Then go choose another and another and another. He could spend the entire day just going through his library. He loves his flashcards and puzzles too but not as much as he likes books.
*He can identify and name shapes: square, triangle, circle, oval, star, heart, and octagon. Stacy wore earrings that were triangle shaped and he looked at her and said "Angle"- he doesn't say the whole word for triangle but that's his consistent way of identifying triangles.
*He loves Sea World and can now say dolphin, whale, and octopus thanks to the many trips that Nick has taken with Gavin.
*Gavin likes his Lego's and I love the concentration on his face as he stacks them.
*He LOVES to color and wants you to color with him. He can name the basic crayon colors. Blue is his second favorite color at the moment, red and orange are interchanged sometimes although we know he is not color blind :) , but he never mistakes PURPLE- that is his favorite crayon color. Coincidentally, purple was my favorite color growing up and I have tons of pictures where I'm wearing purple from head to toe. Although Gavin only seems to favor purple crayons not much of anything else purple.
*He likes to say bye to people and knows exactly when to say bye-bye to the cashiers at Publix and Target...makes everyone laughs when he does it.
*His "please" sign is irresistible and we will give him whatever it is he wants!
*He now recognizes the "I love you" sign and although he can't do it himself, if I sign it to him he will say "love you" back to me....just too adorable! :)
*Gavin will still not say "yes" or "si" instead he says "ca". "Ca" is consistently his yes/si answer. I should mention that his "s" pronunciation is so cute. He overdoes it and it goes on forever. When we can get him to say yes it's more like "yess-sss". He works so hard to get his tongue in the right place that he just holds it.
*He helps me get him dressed. He loves to put on socks and shoes (he starts doing it and then asks me for help). But as soon as we get driving in the car, he wants to take the shoes off. He says "toes" as he is taking them off and then when he takes them off yells "TOES!" as if he discovered his toes for the first time.
*He repeats the last word in our conversations. So we are now starting to be really careful about what we say around him. I told Baby (the dog) to shut up and Gavin said "shut up" so I don't do that anymore.
*Gavin is obsessed and I really mean obsessed with stickers. Anything that sticks is a sticker to him so when we're out of stickers we rely on Toy Story band-aids. This is all thanks to his swim instructor who rewarded him with stickers at the end of the lesson. He would take one sticker on each hand and now he must always get two stickers- one for each hand. If you want to be Gavin's friend now you know what you need to get :)
2 comments:
It's so funny how there are some things that are common amongst toddlers- so much of what you mentioned is Nathan too, and it's heartwarming! Now, you didn't mention the use of "NO!" maybe your kid doesn't do it and I'm just lucky, but no and tantrums are another new biggie in our house.
So good to know - if/when I meet Gavin (for our playdate), I should have stickers! :)
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