16 Months Old!

Mister Mister is 16 months old today! My oh my, time has passed us by so quickly. He is such a funny little guy and has become quite the ornery dude. The past three weeks, he has really been saying a lot of words and really trying to talk more. It's so funny to hear words coming out of his mouth because he has been kind of a quiet guy (pre-ear tubes) as a baby.

His new word list includes: bubble, doggie, daddy, dada, mama, papa, eyes, shoe, bye, me, mine, no, down, mammy (for Cammy), get down, moo, baa, meow, neigh, roar, cheese, poopoo, peepee, cheers, yay, ZoeZoe (for Zoey our cat), this, up, two, three, A, thank you, stairs, mimi (for his paci), bump (which means jump), and please. I LOVE when he says please b/c it is the cutest thing I have ever heard come out of his mouth! There are more words he's saying, but I can't think right now, so I'll add them later.

He is really stubborn. Really stubborn. I know he gets this from his dad.

Baylen has been throwing a lot of tantrums and when he's upset or mad if one of us tells him no, he goes boneless and drops to the ground or arches his back if we're holding him and bawls his eyes out. This drives me nutty, but I have learned to walk away from it or ignore it as best I can and it usually stops a lot faster than if I give in and say something to him.

He has recently moved from his high chair to Brynn's booster seat and sits at the table with us with no tray. He seems to like this a lot, but we still struggle with him doing things like handing me food he doesn't want to eat, flipping his placemat and food flying everywhere, and my LEAST Favorite: pushing himself away from the table. He also thinks we have to "Cheers" the entire meal. Cute as it is, sometimes, that gets a little old. Brynn moved into a different "big girl" chair so she's content with the change as well.

He is still the world's messiest eater. I'm so not joking. I gave him a chocolate chip cookie today and he refused to sit down and eat it. Before I knew it, he had ccc all over his onesie, just huge smears of chocolate all over his face, his hair, smears of chocolate on his legs and his hands were just covered in it. Later on, Dj found a chocolate imprint of his little lips on the wall. How sweet.

He loves drinking out of juice boxes by himself, straw and all. He thinks he is such a big kid when he does this.

Mister has to do everything Brynn is doing. Whatever she does, he copies her. If she screams, he screams. If she climbs in the couch, he climbs up right behind her, usually falling off at least once, but then he's right back up there. The other day, she was using one of their play brooms as a "golf club" and he was copying her trying to hit little farm animals in the living room until I caught them. Also, this past week, Brynn has been pretending that the broom is a horse, so she rides it around the house and shouts, "Neigh, Neigh!" and guess who is copying her? Yep, he's doing the same, riding the mop yelling, "Neigh, Neigh!"

He takes toys away from Brynn constantly. He likes to be the instigator of most of the fights between the two of them. The look on his face when he is planning his attack is priceless.

Baylen has these pretty little curls in the back of his head that are just so lovely. Yes I said lovely. Dj keeps threatening to cut them off b/c they look girly, but I told him NO WAY. They are too cute. I want to keep them as long as I can. I'll try and get a pic of them to post later this week.

Some mornings he will wake up at like 4 or 5 and he'll be ready to get up for the day. NO WAY. So we bring him in bed w/ us and then he keeps popping his head up like every 5 seconds. We threaten by asking, "Do you want to go back to your bed?" and he loudly shouts "NO!" and then I"ll say, "Then lay down and go to sleep!" And he'll lay down for a few seconds or minutes and then he pops back up again. This usually goes on for an hour, sometimes more unless I get tired of it earlier than that and take him into his bed, which then causes him to freak out and he then agrees he'll be a good boy and sleep nicely with mom and dad...

He understands SO much of what we say to him or tell him to do. He can do simple tasks like help pick up certain toys if I give him very simple directions such as "Baylen, go pick up that french fry (fake food) and put it in the bucket" and he'll help clean up. He also likes taking clothes from the washer and putting them in the dryer if I hand one piece to him at a time. He loves throwing things away in the garbage, like wrappers. He loves helping clean up.

His dancing consists of him stomping his foot. Dj has named Bay's move the "Spider Killer." it's so cute. He loves "Ring around the Rosey" too and will do it with Brynn and me as often as possible.

He loves to feed baby dolls or push them in a shopping cart or stroller and he loves to put legos/mega blocks together. Lately, he has become more interested in puzzles and can match the pictures to where they go but sometimes has a hard time figuring out how to fit them in exactly.

Mister MOnkey: climbs on everything. Stands up on the toybox. Stands up on the couches. The play-doh bin. The stairs. His stepstool. The drum. Tries to sit in Brynn's doll highchair. Tries to climb head first into the tub when there's water in it, and even when it's empty. Brynn's bed. My bed. The climbing list is endless.

He has learned how to go DOWN stairs sliding on his butt. This is huge progress from him thinking he can walk down on his feet standing up.

He has latched on to a stuffed camel we named Cooper (which he picked out himself from the zoo gift shop last week) and still enjoys hugging his "lovie" football taggie blanket at bedtime. He's taking less and less milk b/f bed, but still has to have his pacifier. We're working on toning down the usage of that paci, but some days are easier than others. He's been going to bed easier for us these days since we started getting "hard" about it. He sometimes goes down without any crying and other nights he will cry for a bit but then go to sleep. He is finally napping in his crib again during the day. Success!

He continues to love the bath and enjoys filling up cups in the tub and then pouring them on himself or on me. I don't prefer the latter of the two because he tends to dump them outside the bathtub onto my clothes, soaking me. After the bath, he looks forward to brushing his teeth. He would brush them for hours if we let him.

His top 2 molars have pushed through..this happened right around the 15 month mark.

He loves art time at home. Stickers, bubbles, painting, coloring with crayons (when he's not trying to eat them), play-doh, etc.

He finally has begun to love being read to. He'll go pick out a book and ask to sit on my lap and let me read to him. He doesn't stay for very long, so we have to read very short books, but he's showing more interest, and that's exciting to me. Dj laughs because the other night, I was reading so fast that I sounded like the Micro Machines guy (remember him?) because there were like 3 sentences on each page and I knew his attention span would be short, so we flew through the book before he decided to take off.

He still comes in like a bull in a china shop. Bull is still a nickname that follows him around. Always ALWAYS on the go. He's such a boy.

We're working on the whole stop feeling yourself up thing and it's getting better actually. If I make less of a big deal about it, he seems to be less interested in trying to cop a feel on himself all the time. As soon as he's naked though, it's a lost cause.

Baylen loves fruit. Any kind. He will eat that more than anything else you put in front of him. His favorite? Strawberries.
He has not been eating much lately and has become more of a picky eater. He just shakes his head if I try to give him food to try on a fork and loudly says, "NO!" and refuses to eat any of it. I try a couple of times but if he's adamant, I let it go and hope that maybe next time he'll like it.

He can point to his eyes, head, mouth, legs, hair, and belly. (sometimes ears) When I ask him where his mouth is, he opens it and then just grins.

He is a very lovey guy. He loves to give hugs and kisses. He loves when Brynn has to tell him she's sorry for whatever she's done or said to him and always opens up his arms for the hug first.

He loves to sing and when the song, "Love Love Kiss Kiss" by Akaline Trio is on, he'll sing the "blah blah blah" part every time the chorus is sung. It's way cute.

He still falls a lot/trips over things and just kinda flies into the room in mass chaos. That's just who he is. The kid has a ton of bruises all over his legs from all of the falling he does or things he gets into which cause injuries, such as cat scratches, or marks on his legs or arms.

Mister really enjoys wrestling, riding on our back like a horse or piggy back rides, and just horsing around in general. Boy. Boy. Boy.

Mister Orneryness:
He torments the cats. They are not fans of him. He'll purposely run after them and pull on their tails, ears, fur, or whatever he can grab. We're working on this, as he's been scratched twice b/c of it and even Cammy has been hissing at him when he gets too rough. The poor cats try to be nice as long as they can, but gosh darn it, that hurts and I can't really blame them. He hasn't learned his lesson yet, and continues to laugh and run after them as soon as he spots one of them. If they hear him coming, which isn't hard, they take off in a mad sprint up the stairs and hide.

He'll nonchalantly walk by the dishwasher and turn the dial and start it up and then walk away like it's no big deal. He picks up the phone and starts dialing numbers. He pushes buttons on the remote, DVD players, Wii, or TV constantly. If I ask him to come give something to me he's not supposed to have, he'll grin and run the other way as soon as I start walking towards him. (he's super fast these days)

GINORMOUS:
Actually, he's toned down quite a bit and has quite the skinny little waist, but a cute little bubble butt and thick old thighs. He's reaching the upwards of about 28 pounds. He can still wear many clothes size 18 months, some 24 months and some 2T (these sizes are a little big on him, esp. the shirts).

Man hands. Sausage feet. That's my Mister.