At 22 months, Noah is little whirlwind of motion and chatter. The kid never stops making noise. Either he's jabbering away, singing (more like yelling), or banging things together. Brian and I have always been pretty quiet, so I guess he's making up for that. One of the biggest developments this month has been the start of counting. Noah is so good at counting to ten, despite starting from the number four. With prompting he can do it from one, but he usually starts at four. He's also extremely interested in colors, but he can't name any of them correctly yet. He seems very excited that he can name everything he sees, so every once in a while he stops everything, gets my attention, and then begins pointing out everything. "Mommy, wall! Shoe! Floor! Ball! Car!" Gilbert is finally getting called by name ("Bert!") instead of just "doggy." I've also noticed that he's moving from just repeating one word at a time to repeating parts of entire sentences he hears. He frequently strings 2-3 words together. My favorite is when he tells me things like, "Mommy, steps, c'mon!" and then grabs my hand to take him to the stairs. He is able to get up and down them on his own. He still goes up primarily on hands and knees, but on the way down he holds the walls and takes one step at a time on his feet. For whatever reason he refused to ever go down the stairs backwards on his tummy. You know, the safe way. I swear this kid has no fear at all. We really need to start watching what we say, too. The other day Noah told Brian to "shut up!" He hears this directed at Gilbert a lot. Oops. Still no swear words yet though, so we're not doing too bad. Noah is still extremely interested in books, and right now he loves books that count things. He also still likes cars an awful lot. He likes to drive them in circles around the coffee table in our living room. Bathtime never gets old either. Noah is definitely in a serious mommy phase right now. Most days when I drop him off at daycare he puts up a little fuss. At home I can rarely leave the room without a little fit, and if I leave to run an errand he definitely gets upset. He is still addicted to his pacifier, and we're starting to see the emergence of a blankie attachment which I find to be really cute. Only recently did I start giving him a blanket at night after the local BRU had zero large sleepsacks in their store. I know that it's been safe to give him a blanket for a long time now, but for whatever reason I just never did. Noah is still in size 4 diapers, though I think size 5s are on the horizon. He continues to show little interest in potty training so still no potty chair at home. We're also nowhere near transitioning away from the crib. As far as I know, he has never attempted to escape it, and he still rolls around so much that I just can't imagine a toddler bed containing him. Also, I don't think he would ever stay in it willingly. Well, I'm pretty sure that was a really random rundown of Noah's current tricks and talents so I hope it all made sense. I'm going to blink and he'll be two. Sigh.
