Naps: Henry takes one nap starting around 12:30pm. His naps are typically 1 1/2 – 2 hours long.

Clothing: 18-month

Bedtime: 7:00-7:15pm

Eating: Last month’s picky attitude towards certain textures seems to have gone away. Henry’s back to eating basically everything. He’s even been showing more comfort with some foods that are somewhat spicy. He still shows a definite preference for fruits, breads, and pasta.

At meal time, Henry is very interested in using a fork or spoon, and has become a less messy eater (albeit only slightly). His hands still get really messy, but there is less food scattered across the table and floor. Usually when he’s done eating now, he will even start to tidy up his space by picking up and stacking his utensils and sippy cup on top of his plate.

Sleeping: We went through some big changes this month with sleeping for Henry; he moved into his own room at the start of this month. It took him about a week to adjust to sleeping in a room separate from us. There were lots of nights with multiple wake-up calls through the baby monitor for us. In general it didn’t take him too long to get back to sleep once we went in to comfort him. He just seemed unsure of where he was, and depended a lot on comfort from us, his stuffed animals and blankie.

Once he adjusted to his room, dare I say that he seems to sleep better than he did in our room in the past six months or so. For a full week prior to the time change, Henry extended his overnight sleep by a full hour! Instead of waking up at 7am, he was going until 8am or later. It was pure bliss for this mama to have a morning to herself! And then daylight saving came…

We didn’t do any prep work to get Henry ready for the time change. We’ve done enough travel across time zones with him and have found that he has generally adjusted by the third day. It took Henry a little bit longer to adjust to this time change. He was back to waking up at 7am, which meant nap time was now at noon and bedtime was at 7pm at the latest. (And gone were my mornings of bliss that I had been spoiled with.) We’ve slowly been moving wake up time to be closer to 7:30am, following Henry’s lead. As of right now, Henry is typically waking up around 7:15am and we’ve been giving him a little bit of time in his crib to sing and cuddle with his stuffed friends.

Development: Long gone are the days of crawling and hugging the wall as Henry took a few careful steps. Henry is cruising now on two legs and is gaining speed every day.

The language center of Henry’s brain must be going through a some major changes. Henry has added a few clear words to his vocabulary including “yes”, “Mama”, and “Papa”. His sign language vocabulary is also quite large with him knowing about 20 signs and using about 15 of them consistently with no prompting. Henry’s comprehension of language always amazes us. We often ask him to do something not being entirely sure if he knows the key words, and he almost always does it correctly, or to the best of his ability.

Henry’s awareness of himself and of needing to use the bathroom is getting stronger, but we did take quite a setback in the potty training process this month.

Henry has gotten really good at identifying different representations of everyday objects. He is able to identify and point to illustrations of airplanes, cars, cats, dogs, etc. as we are reading books. A big frustration in his life now though is not being able to fit inside of toy cars or illustrations of cars. He asks over and over again for help fitting in, points at the seat, and turns the miniature steering wheel as if to show us that it’s entirely possible.

Henry’s hand-eye coordination has greatly improved. He is much better at using utensils while eating, and now pays attention to the orientation of pieces he is trying to place in a puzzle or shape-sorter.

Likes and Dislikes: Speaking of cars, Henry’s greatest interest as of late is anything vehicles. He loves cars and trucks, but especially has a fascination with construction vehicles. Diggers of all varieties are his particular favorite. Henry loves watching cars drive by our house through our front windows. He can easily sit and watch the cars for minutes on end, just watching and pointing. He also will beg to go outside just to sit in the car in the garage and play with the buttons and knobs, and will point at every single car while asking “Please?” as we walk through a parking lot.

A new favorite activity of Henry’s is stickers. We bought a couple sticker books that are vehicle-, animal-, and princess-themed that Henry is currently obsessed with. He points to a sticker for us to peel off, he places it on the paper, and the process is repeated for the next 20 minutes or so. Obviously almost all of the vehicle stickers have been used up.

Henry also has a particular fascination with lights, specifically turning them on. Every since he learned the sign for “light”, he walks around the house stopping at each light switch and lamp while signing “light”. It’s not an odd occurrence to have to adjust the lighting in the middle of a meal either.

As Henry has become more confident with his walking, he has lost patience for sitting still. He wants to get out of his high chair while we are out to eat, his car seat while we are driving, the cart while we are shopping, and the stroller while we are on walk within a few minutes of sitting down.

New This Month: We’ve been going to a lot of parks around the city to change things up, and have also checked out a couple of free activities happening in the libraries and community centers. Henry got the chance to try a new music class, open gym and open play this month. He loves exploring new places.

Other Notes: We’ve been doing some potty training with Henry since this summer. Things were going really well, and at one point we were down to using two or three diapers a day. Then Henry developed some insecurities about using the potty in front of us but he also did not want to be left alone. We are currently taking a break from sitting on the potty, and just working on walking to the bathroom when he needs to go.

Mama and Papa Update: We went through a lot change this month in the sleep department. We really weren’t sure how Henry was going to handle all of the changes coming one after another, but he really weathered it well. There were a few mornings after long nights where we wondered if it was the right time to change so much in Henry’s world, but all-in-all it went smoothly.

Henry already chats almost non-stop all day long, but we’re excited for his language to continue to grow and become words that we understand. We’re currently in “the age of the caveman” with Henry’s grunting and gesturing to communicate what he wants. That being said, we can’t imagine how much harder life would be for all of us without the baby signs that he does know and use.

This month especially has been fun to watch Henry grow as he gets more stable walking around, and as he is starting to show preferences towards certain activities and develop his interests.