20 months

Emerson,

You are 20 months old now and quite a ham!  Most days I am just loving the stage you are in and enjoying watching you learn and become more independent.

You love to sing lately.  It was like all of a sudden you knew lots of words to lots of songs.  And you like to sing with us, even if it's a song you just heard for the first time (like jingle bells).  It melts my heart when you sing with us.  Even when I am trying to sing you to sleep,  you insist on singing with me, so it defeats the purpose of getting you to fall asleep.

You speak clearly and you have a vast vocabulary at this point.  Three word sentences are pretty common for you, and sometimes you'll make longer ones.  You imitate everything we say right now.  For example, you fell down when Nana was here last week and she said, "did you fall down, buddy?" and you replied "fall down buddy".  So it always sounds like you call people buddy because we call you buddy a lot.

You recently, suddenly knew how to count to ten and I have no idea how you learned it.  And you know quite a few shapes.  You might just be left brained like your father.  It amazes me how you learn things that I don't recall teaching  you.  You are a sponge.  It does make me laugh because I've caught you inspecting the axles of your car before and watching the garage door opener work as it opens the garage.  Future engineer maybe?  We'll see.  Coloring only entertains you for a minute.

You have become more creative in your play, lately.  Sometimes I'm surprised at what you've come up with.  For instance, you'll turn your nesting blocks upside down, line them up, and put your animals in as passengers to a train.  You are very into trains right now.  Your imagination and pretend play is so fun to see develop.  I think you will like having a sibling around to play with, since it's just us most days.

You will hug "baby sissy" and kiss my tummy sometimes.  Who knows how much you really understand, though, because sometimes you'll point to your own belly and say baby.  When mommy holds cousin Callie for very long, you tell me to lay her down so I can hold you.

You are very into Christmas right now and I have had to try extra hard to emphasize Thanksgiving, since something has sparked such an interest in Christmas in you.  I know that Christmas will be so fun with you this year, though, because you are already anticipating it.  I am excited to do our new advent with you.  I think you will really enjoy it.

Emerson, you are a joy and blessing and we pray for you every single night.  What a gift motherhood has been to me and I am amazed as I watch you grow up.  I think it really is glorifying to God just to see the miracle God has created in just a small person like yourself.  I love you.

Love,
Mommy

PS- Here is some 20 month footage.  I tried to capture how cute Emerson is when he sings, but he is much too fascinated with seeing himself on video for me to get anything.  He loves looking at photo albums or videos of himself/our family, which is why it is impossible to get a decent photo of him lately.  He'd rather be on the other side of the camera.  Watch this:



While cooking dinner yesterday, Emerson was helping me put something back into the fridge, and when I turned around, this is what I saw:

Yep, that's a broken egg on the floor.  Somehow, mysteriously, the egg compartment was opened and the lone egg in the carton was dropped on the floor.  Of course the first thing I did was grab the camera, as any good mother would do.