Aaron at 20 months!

I've been meaning to do a post about what Aaron is up to these days for a couple of months now. The Speech Pathologist in me really wanted to be able to do a word inventory and I started trying to write down all of Aaron's words when he turned 18 months old. I got to 170 + words, realized that I still hadn't gotten them all and at that point, I just gave up!

I'm guessing that Aaron's vocabulary is at least 300 words at this point- he's saying several new words each day. He saying 2 and 3 word combinations (bye bye mommy, two cars, new shoes, sit down baby, etc.) and telling 'stories' with anywhere from 3-6 single words. One of his favorites comes from the holidays when we were visiting my family in Iowa. My mom and I took Aaron outside to play in the snow and Nanny accidentally hit Aaron in the face with some snow when she was throwing a snowball. He's been talking about it for months and the story goes like this, "Nanny, snow, face, YaYa (Aaron)." Hilarious!!

Aaron has gotten really interested in counting and singing the ABC's in the past month or so. He can usually count up to 10 (occasionally skipping 7) and is even understanding the concept of 1:1 correspondence. He will get two books and say "two books" and line up 3 cars and tell you that there are "three cars". He sings A, B, C, and then will fill in some of the letters as you sing the rest of the song. He definitely doesn't know all of the letters yet, but is picking up on them pretty quickly. It's amazing all of the things that kids learn without you realizing it! (Typical development is SO amazing, isn't it?!)

He loves to read books and is starting to 'read' some of his favorite books with us. You can start reading and pause where a word is supposed to be and he'll fill in that word.

Aaron is becoming fiercely independent and will tell you "self. YaYa (Aaron)" or "I do it" several hundred times a day! He wants to get his own toothbrush, put the toothpaste on, peel his own bananas and tangerines, put the straw in his own juice box, open packages on this own.... you name it, he wants to do it for himself! It's really cute and funny, except when you're trying to get things done quickly!

He tries to talk his way out of anything and everything these days and is starting to throw some fits when he can't get what he wants. If he wakes up in the middle of the night, he tries everything he can to get us to take him into our bed! Thankfully, he's usually a good sleeper, but when he gets sick or we go away from home, we'll get into some bad habits and he will think that he should be able to keep those habits going! Kids are smart like that!

We have started taking a class at My Gym on Saturday mornings where he gets to run, jump, swing, do gymnastics and trapeze skills, sing, dance, and just work off a lot of energy! He loves it and we've really enjoyed taking him. Aaron continues to be very, very active and is really great at running, jumping, and climbing.

He has started to watch some videos and loves Elmo's World the most! Aaron loves trains and has had a great time with his Thomas set that he got from Great Grandma Avis for Christmas. He's really into playing with his tools and tool bench, continues to love his baby, and does a lot of pretending with his baby and teddy bears (pretending to feed them, put them to sleep, etc). He sleeps with his monkey (Ah Ah), softie, and usually his teddy bear TC, sometimes his teddy bear Stripe, and at times his baby Emma.

We are enjoying the last 7 weeks of having only one child and are looking forward to Aaron meeting his sibling in March!