Drew at 18+ Months

I've been meaning to write a post about Drew at 18 months for a couple of weeks now, but I just haven't gotten to it until now. He turned 18 months on September 5, and it is just so crazy to think a whole year and a half has gone by since he was born. He is such a fun, spunky kid, but I have a feeling he'll present a few more challenges for us than Zach has so far. Drew definitely seems to have more opinions than Zach did at 18 months, and he's not afraid to voice those opinions. It's not that Zach was an angel; he just didn't test the waters too much. Zach has always been very compliant, but Drew is a bit more obstinate. Not always obstinate, but often enough that it's noticeable.

Drew had his 18 month check-up at the doctor a couple of weeks ago, and it went ok. He weighed 24 pounds, 6 ounces, which put him in the 29th percentile for height. He has steadily dropped percentiles since he peaked at the 72nd percentile for weight at about 8 weeks. Oh, well. Zach has never been very heavy, either. However, his head circumference was in the 80th percentile, so he obviously has a huge brain. : ) The biggest shocker, though, was that measured 33.3 inches, which put him in the 75th percentile for height. Our boys have never been so tall!! Just as I expected, Drew was not real cooperative at the doctor's office. He didn't really want to follow the doctor's light with his eyes, he barely let her get his temperature and look in his ears (I had to hold his head still), and he bit down when she put the tongue depressor in his mouth to look at it. He was of course very mad about getting three shots, too, but who can blame him for that? It wasn't much fun, really.

Drew has his top 4 teeth, and he recently got a third tooth on the bottom. It also looks like maybe some molars are coming in on top. He has great curls on the back of his head that look great when his hair is dry. When his hair is wet, he has a terrible mullet! I know we'll need to get his hair cut soon, but I just can't bring myself to do it quite yet. Plus, with the way the doctor's visit went, I don't feel so good about him sitting still for a haircut anytime soon.

Just like Zach, it seems like once Drew hit 18 months, his vocabulary started taking off. I was worried he might not talk as early as Zach, because I've heard that second and third kids often talk later, but he seems to be right on par with where Zach was at this age. Some of his words are hat, water (wawa), bus (usss), fish (isss), balloon (baba), ball, Mama (something he says a lot!), hi, bye (bu-bye), Zach (Dat), all done/all gone, book, banana, truck (it doesn't sound like truck, so Zach and I might be the only ones who know what he's saying), and Thomas (I'm not sure how he says it, but it's something consistent). There probably are others, but I can't remember them all. He also still signs words like please, more, thank you, sorry, and water. He also makes sounds to identify many animals and a few other things. He makes the sounds for cat, dog, sheep, horse, cow, monkey, snake, bug (buzz), duck, pig, lion, hippo, train, and probably some other animals I'm not thinking of.

Drew used to eat anything and everything, but he suddenly has gotten a bit more picky, which may explain the drop in his weight ranking. He occasionally boycotts old favorites, like canned carrots, broccoli and cheese, and string cheese. I can't say I blame him for boycotting the carrots and broccoli, but string cheese? Seriously? One day he won't eat those things, and the next day he'll gobble it up. I never know if it will be a good eating day/meal or a bad one. I know that's not unusual with a toddler, though. Drew still will not really drink milk. Occasionally he'll drink chocolate milk, but it seems like he only does that if we're at a restaurant and it comes in a cardboard box or something. I've bought every kind of milk to try at home- whole 2%, skim, soy milk (vanilla, I think), chocolate- and none of them seem to pass. I've also tried diluted juice, but he won't drink that, either. If it's not water, he seems to not want it. However, I feel like we are making progress. For the last couple of weeks, I've been trying to fill a sippy cup about 1/4 to 1/3 full with skim milk, and then I fill the rest with water, and I make sure Drew sees me fill it with water. He has done ok with that. It's not much, but it's a start. And, the other day Zach wanted chocolate milk, so we mixed some up and gave some to Drew, too, and he liked it! So maybe we'll make a milk-drinker out of him yet!

Some of Drew's favorites include:

-his orange Tonka trash truck. He wants to take this thing EVERYWHERE, and that is not an exaggeration! Usually he likes to have the trash truck and the Tonka ambulance at the same time.

-his lawn mower. If we are outside, Drew is pushing his lawn mower. He actually hands me his trash truck so he can put both hands on the lawn mower. I guarantee that this winter he'll be pushing that lawn mower around while I'm outside blowing snow. Wait a few months and you'll see.

-Thomas the Tank Engine. For quite some time now, Drew has loved playing with the wooden train set Zach got when he turned 2. He loves Thomas books a lot, which is ok, except that most Thomas books are way too long for Drew's attention span, so I have to make up my own one or two sentences to summarize each page so that we still get the gist of the story.

-books with real photographs of animals, especially giraffes and zebras. I don't know what it is about giraffes and zebras, but he really loves them.

-fruit. He'd eat fruit all day, if I'd let him. He is suddenly boycotting bananas, though. He used to love them with peanut butter, but lately he just wants to lick the peanut butter off and leave the banana on his tray.

-his puppy. He has this little white-ish puppy that used to just sit on his shelf is now his favorite stuffed animal. I think it was a gift from Grandma Cynthia and Grandpa Kevin when he was born. For some reason, if Drew is sad, that puppy helps make things better.

-rubber ducks. He really wants those ducks during his baths.

-his wild toucan shirt. Aunt Katherine gave Zach this button-down GAP shirt for his first birthday, and it is brightly colored and has toucans on it. If I'm holding Drew and picking a shirt out of his closet, he always picks that shirt. It never fails.

Something Drew has been doing for a while now is screaming. It's quite frustrating, annoying, and embarrassing. One day a couple of weeks ago we were at the mall, and every saleslady said something to Drew like, "Aren't you cute..." and Drew's response was an emphatic, "Reaaaaaaaaaah!!!" in a terrible, high-pitched scream. I tried to smile politely and say, "He's a little crabby today," but it really was embarrassing. He screams whenever he doesn't want someone to talk to him. He screams at Zach a lot. Sometimes, I don't blame him, like when Zach is trying to force him to do something he doesn't want to do. Other times, though, I feel really bad for Zach, because he'll say something nice to Drew, just trying to engage him in a conversation or an activity. For example, Zach might say in his sweet little voice, "Drew, do you want Zach to get you the zebra?" and Drew will respond with a scream and nasty look. Zach's kind of a sensitive fellow, and this tends to hurt his feelings. I'm not sure how to combat this, but I am sure I don't want Drew to still be screaming at people when he's 2, 3, 4 years-old, etc. So lately I've started telling Drew that it's not nice to scream, and then I tell him to tell Zach he's sorry. I don't know if that's enough to make a difference, though. I also have instructed Zach to say, "Drew, it hurts my feelings when you scream at me," just to help Drew start to get used to that language. I don't know. Half the time I feel like popping him in the mouth when he does it, but so far I've restrained from that. Hopefully I can maintain my composure until this stage (at least I'm hoping it's a stage) passes.

Another stage I'm hoping will pass is the hitting. When Drew gets mad about something, he hits. For example, he did not want to get back into the car last night, so as I set him in his car seat, he started crying, wiggling, and fussing, and then he hit me. Now, of course his hits don't hurt, but I don't want him thinking it's ok to hit. So if we're at home, he gets a time-out and has to apologize. It's just so weird how begin hitting. We don't spank our kids, and Zach doesn't hit, so I don't know where/how Drew came up with this whole hitting thing. The other day Drew got mad when Foudy did a lick-and-run on him (licked him in the face as she walked by), and he hit Maggie because she was closest. I told him that wasn't nice and that he needed to say he was sorry. He said sorry and then gestured down the hall. I followed him down there, and watched as he sat himself down on the stairs for a time-out. I asked if he was giving himself a time-out, and he said yes, so I left him on the stairs for a minute. He's now put himself in time-out a couple of times since then, so I'm wondering if that is the most effective form of discipline for him...

When Drew isn't hurting Zach's feelings by screaming at him or hitting him, the two boys can usually be found having a lot of fun together. It's great that they're at that age now where they can play together without me needing to be involved all the time. They can even both go downstairs to the basement and play while I finish cleaning up dishes and stuff upstairs. It's great!

Drew still tells me when he poops, and occasionally tells me when he's about to poop. The other day he reached behind him and said, "Poop," (I guess that's another word he knows), so I asked if he wanted to go poop on the potty. He happily went in and sat down on the little potty chair.

Then Drew stood up, faced the toilet, grabbed his penis, and said, "Shhhhhhhhhh," like he was going potty! Then he sat down on the potty chair again, and got up to potty in the toilet again. After a couple of times of standing up, he started pulling his shirt up and pinching his belly button and making the sound of pottying. It was pretty hilarious. I should have gotten the video camera out, but it was downstairs, and I thought I'd miss the moment. He never did poop or potty for real, but he sure had fun practicing. Oh, and I went ahead and fuzzed out any offensive material in this picture, so Drew won't be embarrassed later in life.