Liam- 20 Months

[Note: It's another one of those posts that I started weeks ago and never posted.  Liam will be 21 months next week so this is a little late.]

Liam deserves his own post because he has changed so much.  He has such a large vocabulary now and it grows by the day.  He communicates really well.  His most common words are: eat, food, ouch, hurt, and help-- that pretty sums up the story of his life right now.  There are times when he just goes around and names everything he knows randomly.  Gavin now has to watch out what he does to Liam because Liam can now communicate when Gavin does something to him.  For example, if Gavin hurts Liam, Liam will cry and come to us and say "mano, hand, Gaga hurt, ouch."  Liam knows his body parts and will tell us where Gavin hurt him.  Liam understands when I talk to him in Spanish but like Gavin, he mostly responds in English.  There are a couple of words that he consistently will ONLY say in Spanish:  sientate (sit down), agua, azul (blue--his favorite color) and bobo (pacifier).  He has put some words together to form a very loose "sentence."  For example, he says "cheese, eat, please".  He LOVES cheese!  When we get him from nap, he'll often say "eat, food."  One of the cutest things liam does is say "Nice!" when he finds something he likes.  For example, anytime he finds a pillow to lay on, he lays on it, gets comfy and says "nice!'.

As I already alluded, Liam is VERY motivated by food.  In fact, he remembers food names after just one time if he likes it.  Hence, why most of his vocab are food related.  There are days where it seems all I do is make him food/snacks.  I've tried to eliminate snacks for him so that he will eat more of actual meals, not that he doesn't eat well because he does but so he stops grazing constantly and learn proper times to eat.  BUT this child will not have it.  Unlike Gavin who can play all day long without asking for food if I let him, Liam will stop playing and come ask me for a snack when he's hungry.  If I say no to snacks, he walks over to the pantry and bang on the door screaming "snack!".  Sometimes he's able to open the pantry door on his own, if it's not closed all the way, and he will go in and walk out with whatever he can grab and start eating.  I have wondered if he has that disorder where people don't know they are full and they keep eating but since his weight is not out of the norm for him, he must just have a fast metabolism and need all the food.  It's a good thing we don't have junk in the house and at least all he eats at home is relatively healthy.  One morning he ate a bowl of oatmeal, fruit, yogurt and his milk for breakfast and an hour later went to the dining room table, sat down in his chair and said "waffles".  I said "you want waffles?" and he nodded yes and I told him there were no waffles and he started crying and saying "waffles, eat."  He stopped crying once I gave him another snack but I couldn't believe he was hungry so quick after eating so much breakfast.

Gavin is in an artsy stage at the moment and wants to do some kind of art everyday.  Liam wants to do everything Gavin does so he goes along with it at first.  He's doing better about coloring with crayons in his coloring book but his attention span is still not very long.  He does like to put stickers on paper and that keeps his attention a bit longer.

Liam has started showing signs that he wants to potty train--I think.  He has started asking to be put on the potty and he stays sitting on the toilet for a while but nothing comes out.  He just says "pee pee" or "caca" but won't do it.  Today he even wiped his penis and butt even though he hadn't gone potty.  I've been letting him just go through the motions but I'm not expecting him to be potty trained for a while.  He's obviously imitating Gavin and I'm not in a rush for him to be potty trained.  It's a lot easier for me to change his diaper than do the whole potty thing right now.  I don't mind buying diapers a little longer (I actually haven't bought diapers in months, I'm still working off the stash from the CVS bargains from the summer!).

Liam gets a lot of attention everywhere we go.  It seems like someone always stops to comment on his big brown eyes or his look-he puts his head down and looks up at you like a flirt :).  We've been getting a lot of "he must get everything he wants" regarding what we call his "precious moments doll look."  The answer is no, he doesn't get everything he wants but we do know he is cute!