At 18 months old now, our baby is definitely well on the way to becoming a little boy with more words and more adult tasks to take on.
Here are some of the recent new word additions: "airplane, basketball, ball, Elmo, Thank you" (I actually haven't hear him say this, but they say he does at daycare and once for Papa), names all the kids at daycare and the daycare provider by name now, he can even name some relatives. "A, B, C, D," (sometimes he gets to E). He sings this quite a bit now. He will say some phrases like "Oh, no Mama," "Oh no Papa," "Oh no, Me," or to any other object that falls. Other phrases are "Hey mama" and Hey papa" when we come home. We're very casual in our family ;) Some Spanish words are "zapatos" "mio" and "carrer" or "calle" for street. He says "sandals" for the English version of shoes, which makes sense because he did wear sandals all summer. He also says "Baby" for babies he sees and baby dolls. Yesterday we saw his cousins and the 4 year old had a doll, which he took and got very attached to; even cried when he had to give it back. I personally think its fine for him to play with a baby doll. Since he will have a real baby brother soon, I feel like it could be a good thing for him to get him used to the whole baby thing.
Other great forms of distraction for him now are buckles and zippers. He loves to buckle anything with a buckle, but he doesn't yet know how to unbuckle, so once it's buckled he says, "Open," which is our cue to help. Zippers he is fine with on his own, except for starting off the bottom of a jacket. The worst thing about his love of zippering is now that it is getting cold he unzippers all his sweaters and coats and we have to constantly zipper him back up.
