21 months

In two weeks Caden will be 22 months old and I've hardly kept up with any of his latest adventures/skills/etc. He is growing and changing so much each day and keeps us all laughing all the time!

He is still a great sleeper for me. He averages between 12 and 13 hours each night (7pm-7 or 8 am) and naps 1.5-3 hours each day (varies from day to day but always at least 1.5 hours). In the evenings we eat dinner as a family around 6pm each night. Afterward Caden gets about 5-10 minutes to "run" as he calls it. We strip him down to his diaper and he expends his last little bit of energy running from the tub to the kitchen and back and forth giggling and laughing all the way. After his bath (which Daddy pretty much always gives him while I lay out his PJs and such) he brushes his teeth and hair. As we leave the bathroom he says "Night Night!" to the baby in the mirror and then asks to turn the light "On?" (pronounced 'own'). He flicks it on and off a few times and then heads to the living room to give everyone their night night kisses.

He used to say night night but somewhere along the way he turned it in to byebye (despite the fact we only refer to it as night night). There is a chorus of "Byebye Nonnie, ByeBye Gaddy, ByeBye Mommy, ByeBye Charli (dog), ByeBye LuLu (Lucy, dog #2)" and then my favorite "Bye Everybody!!" (bye eh-ba-ee). We all love that time of night so much. In his room Daddy dresses him for bed and then they read stories for a while. Yep, that's right! They READ! He finally adores books and loves to point to everything and tell us what it is. He doesn't like the stories so much, but that's okay with us. He actually loves books so much that the only way to get him to leave them for bed is to start saying goodbye to everything on the pages, and then to say goodbye (goodnight) to everything in the room. Daddy's favorite part of the night is right before he places Caden in the crib, Caden rips out his paci and plants a huge kiss right on John's mouth and says "Bye Daddy." He's just so precious.

Caden loves to play outside during the day. He asks for it all the time. He especially loves bubbles and can successfully dip the bubble stick and blow bubbles himself. He also loves to throw the ball for the dogs (and boy does this kid have an arm) and push his lawnmower or wheelbarrow around the yard. The only thing about the yard that causes problems is the brick stairs. I hate those things. Caden is really quite good on stairs and has proven he can go up and down them without any assistance whatsoever, but Mommy doesn't trust him on the brick ones that have no handrail for him to hold onto, so we battle it out most days. Oh, and we keep his little chalkboard easel (I got on Craigslist for $8!!) on the screened porch and we play with the sidewalk chalk on both the easel and the ground. We spend a good bit of our day out back playing.

Caden talks all the time now. He's still not really articulating his sounds, especially beginning consonants, but we understand most of what he says these days. He hasn't really started using two word phrases yet... a little bit but not quite enough to say that he does it consistently. He's still singing songs, counting, and starting to recognize letters and numbers although those are still hit or miss. I also recently noticed that he now studies the shapes and puts them in the correct slot on his shape sorter he's had since he was 6 months old. Not sure how long he's been doing that as that is a toy we don't play with together too often (it's in his room for when he does "roomtime" each morning while I get dressed for the day).

He has a personal greeting for each member of the household, well except for Mommy who is with him pretty much 24/7. When Nonnie walks in the door each evening Caden runs to her, grabs her finger and drags her to either his room or the living room and pats the floor commanding her to sit down and says "Play!" (pay). When Grandaddy (Gaddy) walks in the door he grabs his finger and says "buds" and drags him to the fridge. I know that sounds a little weird, and honestly the explanation is even weirder than grandaddy giving him budlight, haha! He's saying "birds" and wants Gaddy to get the worms out of the fridge to go feed the bluebirds (which are living in the house in the back yard and have three little baby birds in their nest right now). Yep, worms in the fridge, you heard it correctly. But the bluebirds are such pretty little yard guests it's worth it. Next, when Daddy walks in the door he has two greetings. One is either "doot, doot" or "tar" both of which mean guitar b/c he wants John to play the guitar for him. He loves to dance when Daddy sings his (Caden's) favorite song (I'm Yours- by Jason Mraz). The other greeting Daddy gets sometimes is "up, up," which is Caden's request to be thrown in the air.

Some of Caden's favorite snacks right now include whole apples (we don't slice it, just give him the whole thing), Popsicles, and bread strangely enough.

Things for us as a family are going great as John and I are picking out house plans and are looking at lots to build our very first home! We're really excited! I could go on and on, but I feel I touched on some of our favorite things at this current little stage in Caden's life.