your eighteenth month

Eighteen months old and the most awesome kid ever.

To think of how much you had changed in your year and a half of life

was just astounding and amazing.

In fact you seemed to have changed so much in the last six months

that you were barely recognisable as the same little boy

who had celebrated his first birthday with a rainbow cake

and a big party with his friends.

You were climbing everything now

and it seemed like nothing was safe.

You loved climbing up onto the sofas to sit with us and watch television

or just for a cuddle which was adorable.

And sometimes you would climb up on one of our laps and say "book"

which made Mummy just about as proud as can be.

Your talking and communicating had come on in absolute leaps and bounds

and you had a massive and constantly growing vocabulary.

It seemed like you added two or three words to your growing list each and every day

and some days it was a lot more than that.

You wanted to know what everything was

and would point and say "Was at?" before repeating the word we told you over and over again.

You were also learning lots of words which had some sort of effect,

like "up" which you used regularly when you wanted cuddles or to be picked up to see something.

You also used "up" for down which was a bit confusing to start with,

but also pretty funny as it confused everyone no end.

You had very quickly learned that saying "hi" or "hiya" got a great reaction

and you loved to say it to random people when we were out and about.

It was also what greeted us whenever we got you up from a sleep;

a big smile and a "hiya daddeeee" or "hi mumma" was the best greeting ever.

Having already taught you all about cuddles

which you would now ask for and obligingly give when we asked,

we worked hard to crack kisses.

But you absolutely insisted on giving big sloppy open mouthed kisses.

You would purse your lips, say "mmmmm"

and then lean in only to open your mouth at the last minute.

Mummy thought it was hilarious,

Daddy thought you would get a reputation with the ladies.

Darcy and you were getting to be really good pals,

which we just loved watching.

You adored both the cats but Wentworth was still pretty wary of you,

like he was of anyone other than Mummy and Daddy.

You liked to try and cuddle Darcy

and would bundle onto him saying "ahhhh".

Fortunately he appeared to like it.

And he definitely liked the attention you gave him

because he would often cry at your bedroom door when you were sleeping.

It could have been Daddy influencing you

or the sheer amount of sport that was on the television in our house;

but you were really into playing with balls.

Must to Daddy's disappointment though

you were only interested in picking up and throwing them

and hard as he tried,

you just weren't bothered about kicking them.

In the month between turning seventeen months and turning eighteen months old

you had become obsessed with numbers and counting.

You would point at objects wanting us to count them

and would often say "one" to get us started.

You also liked joining in with "two", sometimes "three"

and always "ten".

We were obviously biased

but we were so proud of how clever and keen to learn you were.

One of your absolute favourite toys

was a pack of flash cards with various different pictures on.

It was probably the thing you asked us to play with with you the most.

You enjoyed saying the words for all the pictures

and could pick out individual pictures if we laid them all out on the floor for you.

We always found it amazing how you could look at different images of cats and cars and ducks and hands

and still know what they were.

Seeing you learn was just such an amazing privilege to witness and be part of.

During the week Daddy would walk through the door and ask what you had learned today

and it was just incredible that Mummy always had something new to share.

Seeing how fast you were developing and growing up

made us have to stand back and catch our breath at times.

While we did miss those hazy newborn days from long ago,

the little person that you were was just so much fun.

You were genuinely fascinating to us

and we simply couldn't believe how intelligent and sensitive and kind you were.

Every single day you did something, said something or learned something

that made us so very proud of you.

And even after a year and a half of being your parents

we still had to pinch ourselves at times

and remind ourselves that you were really, truly ours.