18 Months

Parker is one and a half years old today!

We love having this kid around- it's been an awesome 18 months. He makes us smile everyday! I'm going to share a little about what's going on with Parker at 18 months.

*He loves Books, Bath time, Babies, his cousins, blankets and music.

* He loves books and reading, several hours a day are spent with books. Recently though, his favorite "books" are the photo albums. He loves to look through my scrapbooks and look at the pictures, and point out the people that he recognizes. For a long time he would only point out mommy, daddy, and his cousin Donovan, but he now recognizes both sets of grandparents and cousin Minnette and Aunt Katie too.

He will turn pages and point to people he recognizes over and over and over- he LOVES our wedding album, it's a bunch of pictures of Jason and me, so he can just point to us a million times!

* He's super smart, and it's so amazing to watch him learning, at this age we can see him figuring things out and learning new stuff everyday.

* He loves animals, the zoo is a favorite, and animal books occupy much of his time- of course he also enjoys making animal noises, and he can do a bunch of them-it's really adorable.

Parker with a Zebra

*Parker is very clean. He does really well putting away his toys, half of the time he does it without being asked. He tries to put anything away if he sees it out of place. He also always wants to clean up garbage when he sees it on the ground, You never realize how much litter and trash there is in parking lots until you have a toddler that wants to pick up every piece and throw it away.

*Parker loves to help with everything. He helps me clean, "helps" fold laundry, helps to empty the dishwasher, he helps to cook and stir, and his favorite...he helps us put our socks and shoes on.

Licking the bowl after helping me make waffles

*Parker is in the process of switching from the sippy cup. He drinks all of his water from regular cups, but milk is still in sippy cups for at least a few more weeks. My friend Stephanie gave Parker an Elmo cup, and he loves it! He doesn't want to drink from anything else. I tried giving him water in another cup and he tried pouring the water into the Elmo cup, when I told him that wasn't allowed he did this:

He put the cup I gave him inside his Elmo cup, that way he still gets to drink from his Elmo cup...sort of

*Parker is still totally amazed by babies... Church is great because there are lots and lots of babies in our ward, so everywhere he looks he sees a baby. He watches the mom with their babies, and so he noticed that when the babies are sitting in their carrier the moms are often rocking the carrier a little. So now if he sees a baby laying in a carrier he'll walk up and start rocking it back and forth, just like the mommies do. He'll be a very helpful big brother :)

*He's still working on potty training, he was basically done (clean and dry all day, except for nap, for 4 days straight) and then he went on a potty strike and he wouldn't even sit on the toilet, so we kind of had to start over, but he's doing pretty well. 3 days this week he was in underwear all day, with only a few accidents- I'm looking forward to this one being done with!

*Parker is learning to use utensils, he does okay, but usually gets it backwards; if it's something you would normally eat with your hands (french fries, bread etc...) then he will generally use a fork. If it is something that you would usually use a fork for, then he uses his hands- baby steps though right?? He'll get it eventually.

And a look back:

**Parker One Year Ago

Playing with Uncle Steve

Smiling

**Two Years Ago

He's in there I swear!